Vast
by Amelia Kay
Summary: COMPLETE - Chloe and Whitney deal with what it's like to be far too human in the presence of a would-be Superman and his ideal lady love.
1. Past Imperfect

Title: "Vast"  
  
Author: Miss Windy  
  
Series: Smallville  
  
Pairing: Ch/W  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Archives: Please do not archive this anywhere.  
  
Summary: Chloe and Whitney discover that you really can learn a lot from someone with whom you have nothing in common.  
  
I.  
  
Since moving to Smallville the previous year, Chloe Sullivan had learned to think on her feet. Not that she had been much of a hesitator before, mind you. Never the cautious type. One really couldn't afford caution and hesitation, with an inquisitive mind such as hers. Mrs. Sumners, her sixth grade English and grammar teacher, had often patted her on the head and beamed down at her, babbling warm praise about Chloe's inquisitive mind. Mrs. Sumners was more than halfway to blind but in denial about it, and so, crashing into everything in sight and placing pencils on desk edges that weren't there and such, she had been the subject of many of Chloe's classmates' snickers and rude sketches. But Chloe had loved her. And Mrs. Sumners had loved Chloe, her only sixth grade student in over a decade that had laughed out loud during their classroom reading of Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court."  
  
"It's because you're so bright and curious," Mrs. Sumners had cooed at her after class. It had earned her a poke in the back and a snigger from her friend Mike, but Chloe had basked. It had been nice to find someone who unconditionally encouraged her to ask as many questions as she saw fit, and who completely understood and appreciated the way her mind worked--making connections all over the place, always wanting a full and logical explanation. And the description Mrs. Sumners had provided her with had stuck, set a standard, so that old, batty Mrs. Sumners' undoubting expectations now more or less defined her.  
  
Absurd, really, but something else Chloe had learned to live with in this near-surreal little town was absurdity. If she hadn't learned to live with it, she was sure she would have long lost her "inquisitive mind".  
  
She wasn't sure what, if anything, could possibly have prepared her for Whitney Fordman slinking into her office looking something like a guilty criminal that Thursday afternoon after school though.  
  
Funny, really. She hadn't noticed him at first, which, all things considered, was highly ironic, as Chloe was pretty sure Whitney Fordman had made a career out of getting noticed. Apparently the big lug had stood there for a few minutes silently, trying to either disappear into the wall, or possibly, Chloe mused serenely, struggling to find a bisyllabic word or two with which to impress her.  
  
She was mildly surprised there was no steam coming from his ears. She decided to go easy on him; it was never kind to go into a battle of wits with a clearly unarmed man.  
  
"Can I help you?" Couldn't quite help the sarcastic edge that had sliced into her tone, and she was amused at the way his jaw set, and his shoulders straightened, before he said, "Yeah. You're Chloe Sullivan, editor of the paper, right?"  
  
"The one and only," she crowed, and gave him a too-wide grin. "What can I do for you?"  
  
Whitney's eyes darted about the room as he tried, almost successfully, to not look uncomfortable. "I need a... uh. See, the thing is--there's this... I have a note from uh--"  
  
Chloe blinked at him, her expression purposely blank. "I'm... kinda busy here, Fordman. If you don't mind speeding it up a bit--"  
  
Whitney blew air between his teeth, still not looking at her. "OK. Look. I got into a fight." He sighed tensely, and Chloe leaned back in her rickety old chair, curiously watching him struggle to find the best way to phrase whatever was coming next.  
  
And that was the first time she noticed the scrape just under his chin and the slightly split lip. Chloe's eyebrows shot up. "That's... uncool, but if I you don't mind my saying so, not exactly shocking."  
  
Whitney rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't need this. I--"  
  
"Well, why don't you tell me what you do need, so that we can both go about our business and go back to pretending the other doesn't exist?" Chloe curled her lip slightly in disdain before resuming her practiced poker grin.  
  
"I need--I need to work for you."  
  
This time her mouth could do nothing but form a perfect O.  
  
"I'm sorry--what? What did you say? My hearing must be going, because I could have sworn you just said you wanted to work for me, and that sure as hell can't be right."  
  
"I didn't--" Fordman took a deep breath, and she marked with amusement that his first instinct had been to raise his voice at her. He began immediately with a quieter tone--through gritted teeth. "I didn't say I wanted to. I said I need to. See... I got into a fight yesterday during practice."  
  
"With a teammate?" she asked, her reporter's mind already piecing information together.  
  
"Yes, with a teammate," he said, his words mincing and slow, as though he were talking to an extremely irritating child. "And it's my third fight this year and... Coach made a deal with Principal Kwan. That if I got involved in an extracurricular activity that contributed to the school and kept my nose clean till the end of football season, I could stay on the team and avoid suspension."  
  
"So you picked joining the paper."  
  
"It was the lesser of all the evils," he retorted. He paused, and his expression shifted somewhat towards the spectrum of smug. "Principal Kwan said you'd say yes. He said to tell you that you owed him one." And for a guy who was very nearly a grown man, he sounded suspiciously sing-songy.  
  
"What is this, like your penance or something?" Chloe snorted and turned away, dragging her keyboard closer to her. "Forget it, Fordman. Whatever Kwan thinks I owe him--it isn't big enough to foist you onto my staff."  
  
Tense silence as the keyboard began to click steadily under her fingers.  
  
A few seconds later she paused and, without turning--"I know you're not still here, Fordman."  
  
He let out a breath of exasperation and approached her in two great strides. "Look, you've gotta help me, OK?"  
  
Chloe giggled, sincerely amused. "And why, pray tell, do I `gotta' do that?"  
  
"Because!" Whitney exclaimed, and bit his lip. She found him even more absurd for it. "Because if you don't help me, I'm off the team for the rest of the season, and I have a suspension on my record, and-- no college is going to take me with those strikes against me, and--and that's going to screw up my whole life, OK? And frankly this is the only thing I could think of doing in my spare time that didn't make me sick to my stomach."  
  
"Flattery will get you everywhere." Chloe tapped her pencil against her arm rail. "Look, that's very tragic and everything, I'm sure, but you really should have thought about this before you fed one of your teammates a knuckle sandwich."  
  
"Spare me." But his too-squared shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and he perched himself on the nearest chair, looking somewhat forlorn. "Believe me, he had it coming."  
  
"Oh, yeah?" Chloe leaned in mischievously towards him, and her eyes widened in conspiracy as she asked, "What was the fight about?"  
  
"None of your business! Are you going to let me work for you or not?"  
  
She rolled her eyes incredulously "No! Join the glee club!"  
  
"I can't sing."  
  
"So?? Go be a prop for the debate club."  
  
"Come on!"  
  
"What? I don't care! Why should I care?" she cried, then softened. "Why should I help you? You've been pretty rotten to my friends and you've pretended I'm completely transparent for the better part of a semester. And this is your way of buttering me up? You've got a ways to learn in salesmanship, I've gotta be honest."  
  
"You need me."  
  
"Ha!"  
  
He rushed on before she could retort. "I know Scott Rainier quit doing the sports column two weeks ago when he took on that job at the supermarket." Whitney cocked an eyebrow at her. "He's a friend of mine. And ever since then--well, your sports columns just--just suck. Uh. No offense. I mean... You must have better things to do than go to all the games, and besides, I could do better. I know I could."  
  
She twisted her mouth in resentment and defeat. He was, hatefully enough, right. "God. Can you even write?"  
  
He glared at her.  
  
"I meant write for a paper," she said, exasperated. "How do I know you're not a typical dumb jock, coasting by with C-minuses in English and stuff like that? Huh? I'm gonna have to see some writing samples."  
  
His whole face brightened, and he looked utterly like a different person for a split second. "Hey, thanks!"  
  
"Don't thank me yet, Fordman," she threw up her hands in defense. "I haven't said yes yet. I'm saying... maybe. A very, very cautious, tentative maybe."  
  
"Right," he said, immediately shuttering his expression. He dug through his knapsack and quickly dug out a stack of disheveled papers. "Right. Look, I brought three graded papers from this semester's English class for you. Is that going to be enough for you to look at?"  
  
"I guess." Chloe regarded him with suspicion as she yanked the papers out of his hand. She rifled through them, skimming. A. A-minus. A-minus. Hmm. She nearly had to physically restrain herself from asking if he was sure Lana hadn't written these for him.  
  
A few seconds passed before she rifled every ounce of condescension she could as she stared up at him. "You're not going to stand there boring holes into my head while I'm reading these, are you?"  
  
"Uh--right. No. I just--when will you know for sure?"  
  
"Give me till tonight," Chloe sighed. "I hate to admit it, but you're right. Besides the fact that I'm seriously understaffed in general... athletics is definitely not my field of expertise. I could use someone--doesn't have to be you, mind you... but I'm nothing if not open minded."  
  
"Good."  
  
"Is there a way I can reach you? Phone? E-mail?" Suddenly she felt inexplicably shy, and hated the way she could feel the color rising into her cheeks. "I mean. I don't see you in the halls often."  
  
"No e-mail, but I can write my phone number down for you," he offered. "We don't have a machine or anything, but my mom's usually home, so--"  
  
"No e-mail? No answering machine?" Chloe handed him her pen and watched him scribble the digits on the cover paper of one of his essays. "I had no idea the Fordmans were Luddites."  
  
"Um, no, we're Presbyterian, actually," Whitney said, regarding her strangely.  
  
"Right." She bit her smile back and said, "I'll, um, give you a call tonight and let you know my decision."  
  
"Fine," he said, and stood to leave. "Uh. Thanks."  
  
"No problem," she said softly, to his retreating back.  
  
Two thoughts clashed cacophonously in her brain as she desperately tried to make sense of the last 10 minutes of her life.  
  
One was: What the hell had that been about?  
  
The other was: When Clark finds out, he's going to *kill* me.  
  
TBC..............  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
  
The title is from a couplet in Walt Whitman's poem, "Song of Myself." It reads: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am vast; I contain multitudes." 


	2. Dangling Participle

Part II  
  
"Um, hello? Oh. Hey."  
  
For her part, Chloe waved in the owner of the voice briefly, keeping her narrowed blue eyes on the Mac screen before her. This week's layout, she had already reminded herself a dozen times, was going to be a bitch.  
  
"Come on in, Garrett," she called breezily, still transfixed. "Just leave the toner cartridges and paper on whatever semi-empty spot you can find on the table."  
  
"Yeah, sorry... not Garrett."  
  
She froze and glanced behind her, before turning back to her mouse-clicking with a little eye-rolling on the side. "Fordman. Just great. Come on in; I'll get your assignment in a second."  
  
"Sure." And the sounds of typing were briefly overtaken by a chair scraping against cracked linoleum.  
  
Only a few seconds passed, however, before Whitney interrupted again. "So you must, like, live here or something."  
  
Chloe's shoulders slumped imperceptibly as she donned her best nonchalantness hat. "Pretty much," she drawled, and immediately resumed ignoring him. She blew hair out of her eyes in frustration.  
  
Damn Adobe PageMaker straight to hell.  
  
And another thirty seconds oozed by like molasses. Chloe could practically sense Whitney's impatiently bouncing knee behind her. Naturally, he had to pipe up again, like some kind of mutant life-sized Weeble Wobble: "Must get extremely boring. No offense."  
  
Chloe wondered if this was his socially retarded idea of small talk. "Nah, lately I've been spending a lot of time battling bizarre local homicidal mutants with otherworldly and often superhuman powers," she casually replied, not turning to check his reaction. "Tends to break things up a bit."  
  
A mercilessly brief, but stunned, silence followed. "Y'know... you're pretty weird."  
  
"Yeah..." she murmured as she leaned towards her screen intently. "So are you."  
  
"What?!" Whitney exclaimed. "I'm not weird! I am about as friggin' normal as you get in this town--what the hell are you talking about?"  
  
"Calm down, Mr. Poster Child For Attention Deficit Disorder, I just meant--"  
  
Whitney suddenly sat at full attention, suspicious eyes bearing down on her. "How'd you know I have ADD?"  
  
Chloe turned around to face him slowly, her mind racing for a response that walked the fine line between tactful and sufficiently blithe, before finally deciding upon: "I... didn't know, actually but now that you mention it-- it sure does explain a lot."  
  
Whitney openly glared at her for what seemed like an eternity, before finally spitting out, "What*ever*. Can I just have my assignment now?"  
  
She sighed, resigned, and rifled through a pile of note papers on her desk before settling on the right one. "Here you go," she said, too cheerful as she jutted the paper out towards him.  
  
She looked entirely too pleased with herself for Whitney's current liking, and he soon saw why. His eyes skimmed over the paper, and his jaw dropped indignantly in response. "The girls' *track meet*? Are you serious, or is this some kind of bad joke?"  
  
Chloe jumped to her feet, snatching the looseleaf paper out of his hand, and stared at him down the end of her nose. She was petite enough that it was a rare occasion indeed to stare down at anyone, but she did it with much aplomb and heavy petulance nonetheless. "What's a bad joke is you needing my help and then acting like a whiny little baby when you get it. Now," and her voice suddenly pitched in volume to cut off whatever snappy response was just about to exit his mouth. "You listen to me, Fordman, and you listen to me good. Yeah, I need a sports editor, and you seem to be ideal, being both knowledgeable about sports and, unlike most of your teammates, able to form a complete sentence without going into shock. But I don't need you so badly that I have to put up with your crap. But here's the kicker: you *do* need me badly enough to put up with *my* crap. So you'll cover that track meet and you'll write a nice, informative, enthusiastic article about it, and what's more,  
you'll turn it in with a smile, or else I'm ratting to Coach Buckman that you're being an uncooperative little turd. And I SWEAR to you, Fordman, if you use the words `awesome', `cool', or `sucks', or make a single solitary reference-- no, if you even *imply* a reference to any of the players' cleavage at any point during your article, you better start ordering catalogues from all the local community colleges, `cause it'll be no skin off my back to kick you to the curb like *that*."  
  
She blinked in the thick silence, panting slightly, and took a second to collect herself before adding, "Do we understand each other?"  
  
Whitney snatched the paper back and stuffed it into his back pack in response, looking very sullen indeed. "You think I'm an idiot, don't you? Just like your friend *Clark*."  
  
Chloe winced inwardly at the mention of that name, and raised her eyebrows meaningfully. "Yeah. Now go prove me wrong."  
  
"You know what?" he stood and raised his chin defiantly. "This is going to be the best damn article about the girls' track team this stupid paper has ever seen. You just watch."  
  
"Gre-e-e-at," Chloe drawled, not sounding at all confident. "Can't wait to read it. Have it on my desk by Wednesday morning and all will be right with the world."  
  
He turned on his heel and charged out of the office, muttering, "Thank Christ this is over in three weeks," before he slammed the door of the office behind him.  
  
She let his last proclamation sink in before the extent of his words hit her, and suddenly she was very nearly flying down the empty hallway behind him.  
  
It took Chloe a few seconds to catch up with him--  
  
(Damn Adobe PageMaker *and* long legged boys that make you run after them)  
  
--but she finally managed to veer him off.  
  
"Wait just a minute!" she cried. "Three weeks? What does that mean? Three weeks? What happens in three weeks?!"  
  
She wasn't prepared for the open surprise on Whitney's face. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Football season is over in three weeks, and I won't have to--"  
  
"That's not fair!" she poked a single, accusatory finger into his shoulder as hard as she could. "There's no way in hell I'm gonna train you in journalism, newspaper formatting, and all that stuff, just to have you waltz out of here in three weeks and leaving me stranded for a sports editor all over again! What's your dysfunction, Fordman? If that's what you had in mind, you can forget it. You agree to stay for the rest of the semester or you give me back my assignment so I can give it to someone who will!"  
  
"Jeez... I guess I never thought about it that way," Whitney confessed, poker face steadfastly in place. "It's just that... I'm not really the type to be on a newspaper staff, you know?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess that's best left to us boring weirdos, right?" Chloe snorted, and this time genuine chagrin crept onto his expression.  
  
"Look, I'm-- sorry." He sighed tensely. "I didn't mean it like that. I'll--I'll try to write a good article for your paper, OK? Really."  
  
She cocked an eyebrow at him, still blatantly dubious.  
  
"Really, I will."  
  
And she made a mental note to never, ever let that puppy-dog-eyed, hopeful expression *ever* get her to capitulate on anything in any way, shape or form. The way it had gotten countless other females to do, she was sure.  
  
"That's just swell. And what about the rest of the semester?"  
  
Whitney's eyes rolled skyward, contemplating his options quickly in his head, before his gaze fell onto her once more. "All right!," he practically spat out. "*Fine*! I'll do it for the rest of the semester. OK?? God *dammit*!" He turned away in frustration, and when he faced her again, he appeared once more fully composed. "But only cause you saved my ass from having to do something drastic. Like being stuck singing madrigals and crap like that every day afterschool in the glee club."  
  
She snickered, in spite of herself, as he went on: "Just... I mean. I'm not gonna be all dedicated, and crap, like you are. So--"  
  
"Keep my expectations low?"  
  
He shrugged. "Something like that, I guess."  
  
"Don't worry," she said brightly, smacking him in the chest unexpectedly hard. "They weren't very high to begin with." She strolled by him casually, not bothering with a glance behind her. "Wednesday morning, Fordman."  
  
Whitney, for his part, watched the strange girl slip into her office, wishing for all the world he had a football - a rock --hell, anything, really --that he could drop kick mightily right about now. 


	3. Conjunction

Part III.  
  
Chloe had rehearsed the speech a hundred times in her head, but she still had absolutely no idea what she was going to say. The problem, she decided, was clearly that she'd changed it with each rehearsal.  
  
She clearned her throat and began. "Yeah, so, man that trig test was a monster, huh? I mean who knew there'd be 30 questions on it? That Professor Garces is a complete slavedriver, and Whitney's writing for the Torch staff now, and do you think you and me and Pete should form a study group?" Chloe rolled her eyes at herself as she trudged along the path to the Kent farm. "Smooth, Sullivan. Real smooth." She breathed in what she desperately hoped was one of those "cleansing breaths" her mother talked about after her yoga classes at the Y, and tried again as Clark's barn loomed large on the horizon: "See, Clark, I believe very strongly in diversity among my staff. And before Whitney, we had a serious shortage of arrogant, violent assholes, so I had to take steps..." She sniggered at her own wit, and stopped short at Clark's barn door, staring at it apprehensively.  
  
Time to channel Mom. (*Deep, cleansing breath, Chloe, honey. It'll do wonders, believe me.*)  
  
"OK. He's going to be fine," she muttered to herself, still warily staring at the door as though it were set to viciously attack her at any moment. "He's not going to hate me. God, please don't make him hate me. I'll just casually say something like, `Clark, I just wanted to mention something that might be important--`"  
  
"Like what?" A too-familiar tenor behind her stopped her heartbeat for entirely too long.  
  
"Uh. Clark." She turned around slowly, her gaze suddenly intently studying a fascinating tuft of grass. "You snuck up on me."  
  
"I live here, Chloe," Clark said, the sarcasm in his voice affectionate. "I saw you standing here and decided to come over, since I figured you weren't here to admire the livestock."  
  
Oh, if only you knew, Clark, she thought. "Right. Actually yeah, I came over to see you, so--"  
  
"So it's a good thing I snuck up on you." He grinned. She melted.  
  
"Right." She searched his belovedly oblivious face for a moment before kicking the hapless grass tuft a few times. "Can we go inside and talk or something?"  
  
"Sure," Clark cocked his head, indicating that she should follow him into the barn as he stepped inside. "I was just heading upstairs to tackle that `Tale of Two Cities' outline." As he rounded the corner into his loft, he glanced behind him to see Chloe looking very... pinched. "Hey... everything OK?"  
  
"Oh... yeah. Everything's just... great!" She switched on her happiest grin, which quickly faded. "Actually, no. Actually, Clark... I need to know you're not going to kill me."  
  
"What?!"  
  
"If I tell you something."  
  
"Oh..." Clark half-smiled at her with a question in his eyes. "I dunno, Chloe. Depends on what it is."  
  
"You're going to hate it."  
  
"Well, the more you build it up, the more horrible I'm going to expect it to be."  
  
"It's... pretty horrible."  
  
Her melodrama made his green eyes twinkle, as always. "Did you kill someone?"  
  
"No, but--"  
  
"Have someone killed?"  
  
"No! Clark--"  
  
"Then I'm sure I'll forgive you."  
  
"Whitney Fordman's on my staff!" There. She had blurted it out all in one breath. WhitneyFordmansonmystaff. She watched Clark blink in rapid succession.  
  
"..."  
  
"Clark? Are you--"  
  
"Your staff at the Torch."  
  
A forlorn sigh. "Yeah."  
  
"Doing *what*, Chloe? The guy's the missing link in human evolution!"  
  
"He's... my new sports editor," she said, practically melting into the hardwood floor with guilt.  
  
"Please tell me you're kidding." But her pout told him otherwise. He shook his head, his eyes still wide with incredulity. "Jesus, Chloe, of all the people at Smallville High!"  
  
"Clark, you may not know this, but I was truly, truly getting a little desperate with the lack of staffing over there."  
  
"Obviously!"  
  
She sighed patiently, and tried again: "My sports columns are painfully bad even to me, you know that. I needed a sports editor, and--"  
  
"Chloe, I could have done it if you were THAT hard up; I know about sports, for heaven's sake!"  
  
"You're... you've been really *busy*, Clark." She shrugged haplessly. "Whitney volunteered. I mean, yeah, he's definitely got some anger issues there, and he's kind of a pain in the ass, but truthfully, he's not that bad of a wri--"  
  
"Oh, God, spare me!" Clark jumped and crossed his loft to his window in two great strides, and began pacing. "You don't understand! How could you as my friend let that guy on your staff? Whitney Fordman *hates* me!"  
  
"It's... mutual, I'm sure."  
  
"*I* am justified! He's a jerk. A world class jerk. He's like the Supreme World Jerk! You look up JERK in the dictionary and there's a tiny picture of Whitney Fordman scowling back at you right next to the definition."  
  
"He's... a little surly," she conceded. "But honestly, he's the best person I can find for this job right now, and..." And she decided to leave off the part where she was helping him not get suspended, choosing instead to exposit, "And besides, it's not going to affect you anyway."  
  
"Great, now every time I visit you, I'm going to have Whitney giving me his Death Stare," Clark clicked his tongue. "It's bad enough that every time I turn around, his arrogant mug is right there to... to gloat."  
  
"That's... a little melodramatic, Clark," Chloe patted his arm. "But don't worry. If he tries anything, I promise I'll protect you."  
  
Clark laughed, an echoing hearty laugh that made her smile even wider. "*You'll* protect *me*?"  
  
"Absolutely." And her smile faltered, just a dash of sad, before it returned full force. "Fordman already knows better than to try me. I've already given him TWO full dressing-downs, and he's only been on my staff four days."  
  
"Hmm. Come to think of it, I kinda like the idea of having you breathe down Whitney's neck all the time," Clark's eyes narrowed playfully, and he rabbit punched her in the arm. "If anybody can knock him down a few pegs, I guess it'd be you."  
  
"Gee, *thanks*, Clark," she said, and giggled. "So... you're not mad?"  
  
Without dropping his half-hearted grin, Clark made a space between his thumb and forefinger about an inch long.  
  
"A little?" she prompted, and he nodded slowly, like an adorable little kid.  
  
"But... I'll get over it. I *guess*. Just..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Just don't get yourself all moony eyed over him like all the other girls in school do. Cause seriously, I'd have to puke."  
  
Her heart lurched. Clark was the only one who'd ever been able to render her speechless, and she noted with a self-reprimand that he did it with words like... "puke" . She smiled warmly at him, gathering her things to go. "Oh, don't worry, Clark. There's no danger of that happening."  
  
His encouraging, brilliant smile was still behind her eyes as she trudged back towards her house, muttering miserably, "No danger at all." 


	4. Past Progressive

Part IV.  
  
Whitney had long ago discovered he genuinely liked the sound of Lana's laughter on the heels of one of his admittedly terrible jokes. She was the only one who ever laughed at them, really, and it was comforting somehow... She was relaxing to him, when they were just passing some alone-time together, not having to say much in order to feel right with each other. She made him feel... peaceful. Which actually wasn't so good right now, as he was already naturally half asleep. Relaxed is not where he needed to be.  
  
"So, what do you want to do after school today?" Lana asked, the remains of a giggle still in her voice. "I still haven't seen *Lord of the Rings*, and--"  
  
"Ohhh, Lana, I can't." And he yawned for good measure.  
  
"Aww, why not?" She batted her eyelashes playfully, and he grinned briefly in spite of himself. "What's keeping you?"  
  
"It's this--stupid school newspaper thing," he groused. "I have to go type it up on a computer in the Torch offices to turn it in tomorrow. It's going to take me for *ever* since ... well, you've seen me type. And, she said it has to be done on a Mac, and the school's computer lab has... uh... incompatible software."  
  
Lana giggled some more. "Sounds like Greek to me!"  
  
"Yeah, well, I'm still afraid I'm going to do something wrong and blow the computer up"--and he was rewarded with yet another appreciative giggle from her --"but even if I finish that fast, I have to head over to the store to help out there til it closes, then I have like a truckload of chemistry homework--"  
  
"Come over and I'll help you with that," Lana told him. He shook his head slowly.  
  
"It's going to be late, Lana." He frowned, and she frowned back in empathy. "Like, maybe past eleven."  
  
"Ohhh... Nell won't be too crazy about that."  
  
"I know. Thanks, though, that's really sweet of you." He squeezed her shoulder gently, and they locked eyes, both pensive, as she fingered the collar of his letterman jacket.  
  
"You know, Whitney, I didn't say this before, but I just wanted you to know I am so proud of you."  
  
He smirked, a little sheepish. "You are, huh?"  
  
"Yeah, I am." She leaned in, pressing herself with charming naiveté against him. "You're holding up incredibly well with all the added pressures of your dad being sick, and frankly, you've done a surprisingly minimal amount of complaining about this whole joining-the-newspaper thing."  
  
"Yeah, well, I didn't have much of a choice on that last one," he admitted. "The only thing that sucks is that I figured I'd only have to do this `community service' thing until football season was over, but that editor--she... she *browbeat* me into agreeing to stay on the whole semester or else the whole thing was off."  
  
"Really!" Lana's eyebrows shot up, and she laughed again. "Well, Chloe can be pret-ty persuasive."  
  
"Chloe can be really *annoying*, you mean," Whitney muttered.  
  
"I dunno, I think I actually really like her," Lana shrugged. "We've hung out a few times, and I think she's really nice, and she has this-- amazing mind. Like, she puts ideas together really fast, comes up with things you'd never normally think of. It's kinda cool."  
  
"Yeah. Uh. Real cool."  
  
Her jaw dropped in amusement. "Whitney! Stop it, seriously, Chloe is a really good person," Lana insisted.  
  
"I'm just kidding around," he admitted. "I think she's all right."  
  
She clicked her tongue at him, chiding. "She's a really good friend, too, and Pete Ross and Clark really--"  
  
But her words were cut off by the sound of his muted groan.  
  
Lana made a face, and said, "Sorry, I know, sore subject with you."  
  
"Kent is such a weezer," Whitney scoffed. "The fact that Chloe Sullivan is his best groupie or something doesn't exactly make me think more of her."  
  
She sighed tensely, reaching for the safest, most dissipating segue. "I just meant she does a lot of really nice things for her friends all the time. Plus she is REALLY dedicated to that paper."  
  
A feigned-dejected sigh. "Do you mind? I'm trying to hate her here."  
  
Lana laughed again, and smacked him playfully on the shoulder. "You're in a goofy mood today."  
  
"I'm *really* not," he said, dejected. "That's sleep deprivation talking. I'm grouchy as hell. And totally exhausted."  
  
"I know." Her brow knitted in genuine worry. "Maybe it's a really good thing you have this newspaper thing now. It's not that time consuming, and it's a good way to get your mind off all your problems and pressures."  
  
He laughed a little and shook his head, but then considered her words. "Yeah, maybe," he admitted. "She's given me kind of lame assignments so far, you know, I guess to make sure I wouldn't embarrass her in front of the whole school. I don't think it's really my thing, but... I don't think I stink either. Exactly."  
  
Lana burst out laughing and gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. "You don't stink. Honest! C'mon, I'll walk with you to the Torch offices and say hi to Chloe."  
  
Whitney nodded, and slipped his arm around her shoulder, feeling vaguely content.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
"Damn, if this printer breaks down one more time, I'm gonna have to change the focus of my editorial protests," Pete muttered, banging the printer ineffectually. "Forget the state of our school books--they should be ashamed of giving us such GARBAGE to work with." The paper light still blinked ominously at him, and he growled a few more choice words as Chloe looked on, dismayed.  
  
"I don't get it. It says there's no paper, but I don't know about you, but I'm seeing paper."  
  
"There's definitely paper," Pete agreed. "I don't know what we're doing wrong--maybe the light's just busted?" He contemplated the printer once more and hit the button next to the flashing red button once more. For an instant, he and Chloe were rewarded with the high-pitched whir of the printer gearing up, but just as readily, it froze, only to flash its red light at them accusatorily. Pete and Chloe seemed to deflate, and Pete leaned over, his face inches from the printer.  
  
"You have lost your damn mind, Mr. Epson!" Pete shouted at it quite sternly.  
  
"Um... did we come at a bad time?" Lana's head was peeking around the door of the Torch's offices, a warm smile on her face. "Interrupting something, maybe?"  
  
Chloe grinned back. "We were just, um... setting this here printer straight."  
  
"I hope you showed it who's boss," Lana laughed, and slid into the room, Whitney practically a shadow behind her.  
  
Chloe blinked. "Wow, you look like crap, Fordman."  
  
"Thanks, nice to see you too," he growled, and threw Lana a meaningful look. Lana placed her hand on his chest and gave Chloe a tentative smile.  
  
"Whitney's had a rough day," she explained hurriedly. "I'm gonna split in a few minutes, but can I bend your ear outside for a second, Chloe?"  
  
Chloe sighed. She really liked Lana--how could you not? The girl was as harmless as a fly and genuine and friendly, and she'd been a steadfast and unexpected ally in recent weeks to her. But she had definitely taken some serious getting used to with the prim, quiet way that the dark-haired girl was always waltzing into every situation and... well... intruding. Just a few weeks earlier, Lana had had some miff going on with Clark, and had barged--literally barged--into Chloe's office demanding that Chloe and Pete leave so that she could rant in full privacy at Clark. Why, the very thought of having Clark step outside with her and allowing Chloe and Pete to continue working hadn't even crossed Lana's pretty little head.  
  
In retrospect, Chloe thought, as she followed Lana into the hallway wearily, Pete had been a really great sport about listening to Chloe fume for twenty straight minutes after they'd left Lana and Clark in the office.  
  
"What's up?" Chloe asked. Lana shut the door behind her quietly, catching a glimpse of Pete awkwardly showing Whitney how to pull up the right computer program.  
  
Lana sighed, and fixed her wide, watery, Precious Moments figurine eyes on Chloe. "I just really wanted to thank you for doing this for Whitney," Lana breathed, keeping her voice low. "He's usually too proud to really admit when he needs help, and it was really hard for him to come to you, knowing you're Clark's friend, and--you've just been so nice about it. It means a lot to me, really it does."  
  
And this had to do with Lana how, exactly? Chloe wondered... but instead, she gave a hesitant smile. "Well... sure, no problem, Lana. I needed a sports editor, anyway, and he's truthfully doing a pretty decent job."  
  
"It's just that I know that none of you are all that crazy about Whitney for the way he treated Clark at the beginning of the semester," Lana went on, barely listening. "It was just incredibly generous and... I dunno... really gracious of you to help him out when things are going so badly for him."  
  
"Not a problem," Chloe nodded in affirmation. "I'm sure things will lighten up for him next week, though, with football season being over."  
  
"I'm kind of worried things *won't* lighten up," Lana confessed. "His dad's asking him to take on more and more responsibility at the store--"  
  
"Well, can't he just say no?" Chloe asked innocently. "How's he going to get any schoolwork done, much less write for my paper?"  
  
"He could say no, but really, Whitney's got a big heart--don't look at me like that, he really does! -- so he feels bad, not knowing when or if his dad is going to recover, and--"  
  
"Recover? Wait, is his dad sick or something?"  
  
Lana gaped at Chloe, a pink blush spreading across her cheeks. "Oh, my God, you didn't know?"  
  
"Know what?"  
  
"I'm--I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tell you," Lana stammered. "I thought you knew, oh, God--"  
  
"It's OK, Lana, I won't say anything," Chloe rushed to tell her. "But I didn't realize Whitney's dad was sick. Is he going to be OK?"  
  
"They don't know yet," Lana said, lowering her voice even more. "I'm sorry, Chloe, you know I'm not the kind of person to gossip--"  
  
"Yes, I know, Lana," Chloe said, and forced a grin. "You never gossip. Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me."  
  
"They think he's got some kind of chronic heart disease," Lana went on, earnest sorrow draped across her features. "He's had high blood pressure for years, you know, he's kind of this major type-A personality, and he's expecting Whitney to take over for him as much as possible at the store while he's out of commission, which I think is totally unfair."  
  
"It is," Chloe agreed. "I've seen that store--it's huge. Don't they have managers or someone else? That's just strange."  
  
Lana shifted uncomfortably, realizing she was revealing way more than she should have... but Chloe, she decided almost on the fly, was her friend. "Whitney's dad has always made a big deal about how it's a family business, you know? He kind of expects Whitney to take over the store when he's out of college. So I guess they're just expecting him to fill in now as much as he can..."  
  
"That's crazy!" Chloe exclaimed, then looked abashed. "Uh.. I mean. No offense."  
  
Lana smiled at her. "It's OK. It really is pretty crazy. I think this newspaper thing has been a way to get his mind off it all these past few weeks." She sighed, forlorn. "I wish I could relate and help him more, but my parents were killed when I was little--" Chloe braced herself for yet another retelling of this story, but thankfully it didn't come this once.  
  
"So I can't really relate to what it's like to watch your parent get sick and know that he could go at any moment," Lana finished, much to Chloe's relief. "I didn't mean to let it slip about his dad, but--he really does have a lot on his mind, and to tell you the truth... I think he's kind of enjoying this newspaper thing." She giggled at her own words, and Chloe's eyebrows inched upwards, pleased.  
  
"Wow. That's--I'm glad to hear that," she said sincerely. "He really is doing a pretty decent job, as much as I hate to admit it."  
  
Lana's grin widened in conspiratorial excitement. "Well, I read your paper every week--he really is!"  
  
"I'm glad you told me about his dad," Chloe added. "I've been giving him kind of a hard time. I think. Maybe I'll go a little easier on him."  
  
"It's OK, sometimes he needs that." Lana patted Chloe's arm reassuringly. "Listen, I have to go, got tons of homework --"  
  
"Gotcha," Chloe cracked a crooked smile at her. "See you later."  
  
"Take care!"  
  
Lana slowly vanished in the distance of the hallway, until finally slipping out of the main exit door. Chloe watched her leave, wondering why it was that she couldn't bring herself to hate her.  
  
It's not like she didn't have plenty of justification. Lana had qualities Chloe had never wanted to possess herself, until the day came when she realized that Clark had fallen like cement through water for every single one of those qualities: grace, soft spoken femininity, subtleness, coquettishness... not to mention that obviously effective damsel-in-distress vibe. It wasn't like Chloe wanted to be Lana; she liked herself fine... she just sort of wished other people would like her just as much.  
  
Lana had always been a good friend to her, though, and she didn't like how... ugly she felt inside when she thought that way about Lana. After all, it wasn't Lana's fault that the guy of Chloe's dreams wasn't noticing her. If Lana were to move to Alaska tomorrow, it wouldn't make Clark like her any more than he already did.  
  
She sighed, despondent, and braved the Torch office once more...  
  
Only to find a bleary eyed jock rubbing his eyesockets wearily while Pete repeated the instructions for what looked like the fourth or fifth time. She could always tell when Pete was getting impatient, and she imagined it wouldn't take much with the Golden Boy over there. Whitney just nodded and "Mmmm"'ed in assent, clearly not understanding a word of it.  
  
"Then you just cut and paste the table--"  
  
"How do I do that?"  
  
Chloe sighed audibly. "Look, Fordman, why don't you just go home?"  
  
Whitney stared at her in vague disbelief. "What? Go home? I have to type up this--"  
  
"It's cool, it's short," Chloe shrugged. "I'll do it. You look like hell. Go home and get some sleep or something."  
  
He gave a brief, dry laugh, knowing that wasn't going to happen. "Well, if you're sure..."  
  
"I'm sure."  
  
"And you're not gonna rag on me about it next week."  
  
"No ragging, I promise. Now get the hell out of my office, `cause Christmas comes only once a year." And she gave him her sweetest smile.  
  
He opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind. "Thanks," he said simply, a question still in his eyes as he grabbed his things and left.  
  
Pete waited til he was out of earshot to turn to Chloe filled to the brim with incredulity: "Do my eyes and ears deceive me? Did you just cut Whitney Fordman a break?"  
  
"Oh, God, I did, didn't I?"  
  
"You did, indeed."  
  
"I don't know what came over me," Chloe sighed, and plopped down in front of her Mac.  
  
"I couldn't venture a guess," Pete snorted.  
  
"Rest assured it won't be happening again." She rubbed her eye and stared at the screen, not seeing anything on it.  
  
"So... what did Lana have to say?"  
  
"None of your business, nosy!" And she elbowed him in the arm playfully. "You're just going to run and tell Clark. I know how you guys operate."  
  
Pete pretended to act wounded, as though an arrow had gone straight through his heart, but then he laughed. "A guy's gotta take his breaks where they come."  
  
"Like I need to hear this."  
  
Pete's grin immediately faded. "I'm sorry, I forgot."  
  
"About my feelings?" Chloe frowned, fingering the keyboard. "Yeah you and Clark have been making that a habit."  
  
"I don't think I need to tell you that I think that whole scene is kind of hopeless," Pete said gently. "The boy has got it bad. All he ever thinks about is--"  
  
"I know that," she said sharply. "I realize that, really. I really don't know what's wrong with me."  
  
"Look, Chloe, you're a good looking girl, you know that?" Pete said, and she cocked an affectionate smile at him. "You are, really. And you're smart and damn cool. There's no reason why you don't have a million guys banging down your door. You just need to expand your social circles. That way you can ease your way out of this Clark fixation painlessly."  
  
"Aggggh."  
  
"Seriously. You've got to do like I do."  
  
She blinked innocently at him. "Spend my weekends surfing porn on the Internet?" And she ducked an eraser aimed straight for her head.  
  
"I *meant* date around!" he exclaimed. "We're too young to settle down or get hung up on just one person. You ought to go out with a bunch of different guys. Nothing serious, just go out and have a little fun. Or at least hang out with other people so you meet other guys. Eventually our Mr. Kent will just be a hazy, fond memory."  
  
She rolled her eyes at him. "Look, I appreciate the advice, but--"  
  
"Yeah, I know, you prefer to wallow."  
  
"I am *so* not wallowing."  
  
"You so are."  
  
She gave him her most withering playful glare, but he was nonplussed.  
  
"It's obviously affecting your judgment since you were just seriously nice to Whitney Fordman, who is, in case you haven't heard, an asshole."  
  
"I've heard," she said, and nodded weakly. "You know what-- you're right. He better have appreciated that, because I can't think of any good reason why he should get any more breaks. I am so sick of people at this school thinking that just because they're beautiful, they deserve--"  
  
"Whoa, you think Whitney Fordman is beautiful?!" Pete asked, aghast.  
  
She paused, and closed her mouth mid-sentence in dread realization. "I have eyes," she said, a note of defensiveness creeping into her tone. "Anyway it doesn't mean he's entitled to any more special favors than the rest of us. I just... um... got overtaken by the Compassion Fairy for a second there. But no more; from this day forward, I put my foot down."  
  
"Riiiiiight," Pete drawled sarcastically. "Now let's get cracking, Ms Spine of Steel... you have an article you have to type up for a `beautiful' jock."  
  
"Do you *mind*?"  
  
Pete snickered and shook his head as she started typing. He went back to work on the printer, murmuring, "Hopless. Ju-u-ust hopeless."  
  
"How would you like to be headless?"  
  
"Uh.... I'mma start on the front page layout."  
  
"Best idea I've heard all day."  
  
++++++++++++++++  
  
Author's notes: Thanks to Cyb on the TelevisionWithoutPity.com boards for giving me the Precious Moments figurine image of Lana. Hee. Also, I reference the articles that "Pete" has been writing on the SmallvilleTorch.com web site about the dilapidated state of their school books.  
  
Also, the first paragraph is a shout-out to an article where Eric Johnson (Whitney) confesses that Kristin Kreuk (Lana) thinks his jokes are terrible. Hehehe. 


	5. Imperatives

Spoilers for "Kinetic", immediately after which this chapter takes place. Beware of impending but, I hope, mild melodrama. That's all I'm gonna say about this one. These suckers just keep getting longer and longer.  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
Whitney stared vacantly into his own reflection in his cooling coffee. He took it black, with two sugars. Real men, his father had often opined, take coffee black. As a result, Whitney had tried to acquire a taste for it that way when he was younger and more impressionable, but he'd never been able to quite keep from gagging, and he had always snuck in two packets of sugar. It had made him feel quite defiant and triumphant until he'd realized at about age fourteen that two packs of sugar weren't much in the way of ammo against a domineering and invasive father. Still, there was something grudgingly satisfying about keeping to the secret ritual. True, it was an imperceptible act of rebellion, but then, it seemed as though virtually everything in his life lately was small and slowing to a halt. And so he sat on this night in the far recesses of the Beanery still with his coffee black with two sugars, and try as he might, he couldn't avoid staring critically at his own likeness in the black pool inside his oversized mug.  
  
Under eye rings, check. Hair that had long needed a barber—check. Vacant expression of adolescent ennui—check. Pathetic. He sighed and glared at himself in the coffee, sniffing faintly the hazelnut wafting from the mug.  
  
"Lose something in there?"  
  
He was, in retrospect, lucky he'd had a lot of training for thinking on his feet, or else he'd have easily had hazelnut coffee all over himself from the start the voice had given him. He glanced up briefly. Oh, jeez.  
  
"Hi, Chloe." He set the coffee down and scrutinized the table top.  
  
"You look like you don't want to be found," she said after a beat.  
  
His response was toneless, bland, and he didn't meet her eyes. "And yet, here you are," he sighed. After a second he checked for her reaction, and saw that her features had gone stony and slack, and she was turning to leave.  
  
"Right. I guess I'll see you—"  
  
Damn his conscience. "Hey—wait." He sighed again. None of his problems were Chloe Sullivan's fault. She'd done nothing but be kind to him, and it wasn't like his poor, bruised ego couldn't use the attention of a pretty girl right now.  
  
She turned and rolled her eyes at him. "Hmm?"  
  
Whoa. Pretty girl? Where had that come from? Whitney shook his head to clear his thoughts. Clearly he was more sleep deprived than he'd first estimated. "I'm—I didn't mean that. What are you doing here?" She smirked, making her eyes crinkled, and he blinked. Hmm. Love, he finally concluded, may very well be blind… but he sure wasn't. And he sure as hell couldn't afford to be discriminating when it came to friendly attention these days.  
  
"What am I doing here? It's a coffee shop," she said dryly. "I'll give you three guesses."  
  
He hid a smile despite himself. "Right. I meant—it's kinda late. And a school night."  
  
"And a Tuesday in January and you are wearing blue," Chloe added meaningfully. "Are you done, Captain Obvious?"  
  
Whitney paused, and then nodded slowly. "Yeah. I deserved that."  
  
"Totally did."  
  
"Have a seat. I mean. If you're not leaving."  
  
After a moment's consideration, Chloe shrugged and sat, still hugging her laptop to herself. "So… what are you doing here all by yourself?"  
  
He started to answer, then thought better of it. "You first."  
  
Chloe cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly, but she said, "Waiting for my Dad to get out of work. He works late at the plant on Tuesday nights and he doesn't like me sitting in the house all by myself. So I come here to work on schoolwork and he picks me up around 11:15." She rolled her eyes and grinned affectionately at the thought of her Dad fussing over her. "I'm not supposed to leave the Beanery. It's just so he knows I'm in a public place. I guess he thinks I'll keep out of trouble that way."  
  
"Sounds kinda… unconventional," Whitney said, and Chloe nodded.  
  
"Yeah, that's us, I guess… unconventional."  
  
"Nothing wrong with that."  
  
"Yep." She sighed and set her laptop down, flipping it open. "So what brings you here?"  
  
"You taking notes?"  
  
She laughed in spite of herself. "No offense, but 'Whitney Fordman visits the Beanery' isn't exactly front page news."  
  
He didn't smile, but there was amusement in his eyes. "No kidding. I'm actually… kinda playing hookie."  
  
"Hookie? It's 10:30 at night."  
  
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," he said, mimicking her earlier tone, and she ducked her head and snorted.  
  
"I guess *I* deserve that," she muttered.  
  
"Uh huh." He cleared his throat, and resumed studying his coffee. "I'm supposed to be helping with inventory right now. At my Dad's store. But uh. I bailed."  
  
"That's not very nice, Fordman," Chloe chided with a heavy helping of sarcasm.  
  
"Yeah, well, I'm not feeling really nice right now," he replied. "It's just for an hour, anyway. I have every intention of going back at 11:00 or so, and there's still gonna be plenty to do. I'm just—I needed a break. You know? Just for a few minutes. I mean, I know they need me and everything, but—"  
  
"Hey, it's cool, dude, relax. I'm sure they'll survive without you for a whole hour," she shrugged, not noticing the way he gaped at her as she ordered her coffee.  
  
He'd been expecting a reprimand. Possibly a lecture on responsibility and following through on commitments. He tensed automatically, thinking of his father's demanding voice or his mother's drawn, unyielding expressions. Or possibly a sympathetic pep talk, the kind he'd gotten from Lana every time he'd tried to talk to her the last few days. Awww, Whitney, I know it's tough, but just hang in there. In fact, everyone had added their own note in a chorus of the same message: keep on trucking. Be a man. You'll get over it. Your life will go on. And for God's sake, don't complain and don't take any time to collect yourself.  
  
He felt immensely sorry for himself at that moment. "I'm just… a little tired, I guess."  
  
"Well, you look like you were run over by a truck," she said, nodding briskly. "If you don't mind my saying so."  
  
He blinked, adjusted to the bold frankness, and decided to plunge into it himself. There had, in fact, been an abysmal shortage of people willing to listen to him lately. Leaning forward slightly and glancing around to ensure their relative privacy, he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Hey. You heard about what really happened. While you were, you know… in the hospital. Right?"  
  
"About the business with the mutant tattoos?" she asked softly, also surreptitiously scanning their surroundings. She nodded, and met his gaze. His eyes were wide as he nodded back.  
  
"I feel like… everything's in slow motion."  
  
"Slow….?" She cocked her head at him questioningly.  
  
He paused, trying to form the ideas into coherent sentences. "Like every second lasts a minute. I feel like weeks have passed, like every day is endless, and it's only been four days. I feel like everything in my head is trying to get in gear again, but it's like… molasses."  
  
"I see," Chloe said, not meaning to sound quite so incredulous.  
  
"Ugh. Look, forget it. I'm not explaining this very well at all. I dunno what's wrong with me, and it just. It just sucks." And it's unbearable, he almost added, but then thought better of it. All he wanted was to put as much distance between himself and his current life circumstances, and instead it seemed as though he were fighting to keep every moment from going on pause.  
  
"That makes perfect sense actually," Chloe said, near whisper to avoid eavesdropping.  
  
"Yeah, well, it doesn't to me." Not like anything did anymore, he silently added to himself.  
  
"Fordman, your molecules were moving at inhumanly fast rates," she said. "Now that you're back to normal, it's only natural that you feel a little-- sluggish. And ya know, I'm sure the sleep deprivation isn't helping any, either. How much are you getting these days, anyway?"  
  
He snorted. "I can handle it," he said curtly. "But, yeah I guess you're right about the—the molecule thing."  
  
"Of course I am," she said brightly. "Hey, not to change the subject or anything, but … are you going to have something for tomorrow's deadline?"  
  
"What? Oh… crap," he muttered, his expression stricken. "I completely—crap. I'm sorry. I'll try to put something together when I get home tonight."  
  
"Yeah, no offense, but I figured you wouldn't. You know what… I think I may just let Pete put out a seriously short version of the paper this week," she said, deciding on the spot. She gestured with her chin towards her broken arm. "Typing with one hand is a *lot* harder than it looks." She paused for a beat, and then deadpanned, "I don't know how you boys keep up on the Internet." And she resumed sipping her coffee innocently, not looking at him.  
  
His mouth dropped open for a second, and then he let out a short burst of laughter. It was, she decided, an unexpectedly pleasant sound. He was still grinning and snickering, and rubbing his eyebrow when her gaze fell on him again.  
  
"I can't believe you just said that," he admitted.  
  
"I happen to be full of surprises, Fordman," she muttered happily, and powered up her Mac.  
  
"I just *bet*," he drawled. Whitney felt the tension slipping away from him in slow increments as he watched this peculiar, exasperating girl's face light up with just a few clicks of her mouse. He found himself quietly enjoying the way she chewed on her bottom lip as she dug through the files on her computer, wishing he had something left that would allow him to lose himself in it that way, when suddenly--  
  
"Hey guys," a voice chirped behind Whitney, and he felt a cool familiar hand rest on his shoulder. He sat up straighter out of sheer force of habit and turned his head to look… right up into Lana's face. Lana's quick, dark eyes were darting from Whitney to Chloe, who had looked up and given her a grin and a lazy wink as a greeting before resuming her clicking, and then back to Whitney again. He avoided meeting the question in her eyes.  
  
"Hey, Lana," Whitney said, trying for all he was worth to sound enthused. Nothing personal; he hoped she understood that. It's just that his personal energy had completely bottomed out in the hazy, dim atmosphere of the Beanery and the aimless, pleasant chatting he'd engaged in for the last few minutes.  
  
For her part, Lana interpreted this in entirely the wrong way. She tried to keep her tone even and neutral. "What's… going on here?"  
  
"Nada," Chloe said. "I'm waiting for my Dad to come get me."  
  
"Ah." And Chloe quickly averted her gaze, trying not to notice the way Lana's eyes bore down on Whitney, who avoided his girlfriend's gaze studiously. "What happened to you tonight? I thought you were coming over to help me with organizing next week's food drive."  
  
Suddenly, Whitney slumped in realization. "Oh, my God, I completely forgot. Oh, God, I'm really sorry, Lana." How could he have been such an idiot? He scrambled for a coherent explanation, rapidly realizing there wasn't one. "It's just—I had inventory today after the store closed, and—"  
  
"Right, inventory," she said softly, looking meaningfully at Chloe, who continued to surf PageMaker carefully pretending to be completely oblivious to any of the dynamics of the scene before her.  
  
Whitney found himself blushing furiously, fully aware that it was indeed a flimsy excuse that had just appeared to tumble out of his mouth, as Lana went on in a restrained, quiet voice. "I mean. You could have called. Or—or *something*. You know? I kind of waited for you for a long time before I finally gave up. It's just that you said you'd be there and—"  
  
"I said I was sorry," he snapped, and then regretted the awkward silence that fell upon them all. Chloe coughed uncomfortably, and Lana's gaze remained unwaiveringly accusatory. He cleared his throat and tried again: "I *am* sorry. Really. I've had a lot on my--" Whitney sighed tensely and stopped his own excuse. "I'm really sorry. I still want to help you. I'll do whatever you need me to. I may be half asleep doing it," he muttered under his breath, "But I promised you I'd help out, and I didn't mean to let you down like that."  
  
"It's OK," Lana said, her features relaxing somewhat. "It all worked out fine in the end. I actually came to realize you're stretched pretty thin these days, and I decided to just get someone else to help out instead."  
  
"Really?" Whitney asked, taken aback. "Who?"  
  
"Hey guys, what are you two doing out so late?" another, deeper voice piped in on the other side of Whitney. He didn't even have to look up to confirm the owner's identity. He knew it belonged to the world's most cocker-spaniel-like human being.  
  
"Kent," Whitney said flatly, trying very hard indeed not to grit his teeth. "What a surprise." And he couldn't help but notice that Sullivan was paying quite a bit more attention now. Hmm.  
  
"When you didn't show up, I called Clark," Lana added, and Whitney fought to keep his expression utterly neutral. "So you see, it all worked out!" She squeezed Whitney's shoulder and smiled sweetly at him. He could only manage to stare back at her, his eyes dark.  
  
"That's—that's great," he managed, sounding lame even to himself. "I just knew you could count on *Clark*."  
  
Lana and Clark, for their parts, completely missed his sarcasm. "It's no problem, Whitney," Clark shrugged amicably. "I know you've got a lot on your mind, and I don't mind helping Lana out."  
  
"Yeah, I know you don't," Whitney retorted, sorry as soon as the words escaped his lips. He glanced subconsciously at Chloe, whose face seemed to fall imperceptibly. He shifted uncomfortably and finally stood, throwing down a couple of dollars on the table in front of him. "I guess I better get back to work." He glanced at Clark briefly and said, ever so grudgingly, "Thanks for stepping in for me on the food drive, Kent."  
  
"No problem!" Clark shrugged.  
  
"I'll see you tomorrow," Whitney told Lana, and gave her a gentle squeeze on the arm. She smiled as warmly as possible at him, and Whitney straightened his posture and left without looking back, only sparing Chloe a "Later, Sullivan."  
  
"Later," Chloe breathed, not sure what that whole scene had been about. Clark sat in front of her and Lana shifted her weight from foot to foot for a few seconds before taking the seat next to Clark. Which, coincidentally, Chloe noted, put her thigh to thigh with Clark. Neither of them budged. Chloe pressed her lips into a thin line.  
  
"So," Lana said, keeping her voice as casual as she could. "I didn't know you and Whitney were hanging out now."  
  
Chloe felt herself blush for reasons she couldn't quite understand. "Uh. We don't. Hang out, that is. I just ran into him here and he looked like he could use the… I don't know. We don't hang out," she added again, more sharply than she'd intended.  
  
"Oh," Lana said, leaning casually into Clark. Chloe bit her lip again as Lana went on. "That's too bad. I think Whitney could really use a friend like you right now."  
  
"Uh. He could?"  
  
Clark smiled at Chloe winsomely as Lana nodded. "You know, someone impartial. I mean, I try my best to be a good listener, but—"  
  
"Yeah, I know," Chloe nodded, giving a pointed, subtle glance to Clark. "It's hard to be objective when you care so much about someone."  
  
Lana paused, her smile faltering briefly before resuming its full wattage, and she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, exactly."  
  
"Well, like I said, we don't hang out," Chloe repeated, more firm than before. "We don't really have that much to talk about. In fact, I think I get on his nerves. And to be honest, he sometimes gets on mine too. Uh. No offense, Lana."  
  
"None taken," Lana laughed. "I think you two are the most bull-headed people I know." She laughed at Chloe's expression even more. "I say that in a totally admiring way. It's something I admire about you both. You guys really stick to your guns."  
  
"Even if it kills you," Clark added, and both he and Lana laughed and stared into each other's eyes warmheartedly, their gazes lingering.  
  
Chloe, for her part, could not bear to look at this another second. She drew in her breath sharply and stood suddenly, tossing a fistful of money from her pocket onto the table where Whitney's payment still lay. "I'm… I'm going to wait outside for my Dad." She looked at the question in both their glances, and begged off further, "He's had a 12 hour shift and I don't want to make him look for me in here."  
  
"Ah. See you around, Chloe," Clark waved her off. "We're going to stick around here and plan the food drive a while, I think."  
  
"Swell," Chloe said, too brightly. "Have fun, kids."  
  
"Later, Chloe," Lana said, smiling at her agreeably.  
  
"Yeah, see you around," Chloe muttered under her breath.  
  
She couldn't leave fast enough for her taste. Her father, she knew, wouldn't be coming for 15 minutes or more, and it was briskly cold out, but she decided that a short walk around the square would clear her head of the hurt that was suddenly making it pound. A food drive. How could she possibly compete with that? Chloe was many things, but instinctually charitable, she wasn't. In fact, everything that made Clark look at Lana that way… Chloe wasn't. The more time that passed, the longer that list of qualities in which she was lacking got. She rounded the corner and leaned against the quiet brick building, angrily blinking back resentful tears and trying to catch her breath before they turned into embarrassing sobs.  
  
A dry voice in the sharp night air made her gasp. "You look like you don't want to be found."  
  
"Oh. Hey, Whitney, I didn't see you there." She stood on her own feet quickly, wiping her eyes in one swift motion with the back of her arm. Chloe studied his form, sitting squatly between the shadows of two cars parked curbside. "I thought you were heading back to your store."  
  
"I was. I… guess I needed to clear my head a little bit."  
  
"I know the feeling."  
  
"Heh. Yeah." He stood slowly, and leaned agianst the trunk of one of the two cars that flanked him. Picking aimlessly at the pair of gloves in his hand, he said, "You. Uh."  
  
"What?" she asked irritably, not sure why she didn't just keep walking. Maybe she just needed someone with which to commiserate. Maybe Whitney could annoy her into forgetting things. Like the fact that Clark would never, ever look at her the way he had just looked at Lana.  
  
"Nothing, I shouldn't say it," he murmured.  
  
"Well, I'm nosy and kinda relentless, so now you have to say it."  
  
He smirked. "Well. At the risk of you getting all pissy at me."  
  
"I'll try my best to contain the pissiness."  
  
"I appreciate it." Whitney shrugged, and stared at her. "Well. Back in there—" he gestured toward the Beanery with his head—"I started thinking you might have a…. thing for Kent."  
  
"A *thing*?!" she cried, the beginnings of a protest forming on the tip of her tongue. But the way he was staring at her made every argument that popped into her head seem progressively lamer.  
  
"Come on. You like Kent." Whitney stared at her intently, his expression thoroughly cynical and less than amused. "You know, contrary to what you'd like to think, I'm really not some kind of chimp."  
  
"I never thought—"  
  
"Yeah, what*ever*," Whitney cut her off, and rolled his eyes skyward. "Besides, everybody else seems to think he's some kind of. I don't know. Superhero. I don't see why you shouldn't too."  
  
"You don't always have to be so shitty, you know," Chloe said hoarsely, one foot inching towards the main street, begging her away.  
  
"I'm not being shitty; I'm being honest." His words were unsympathetic, but his tone was not unkind. She regarded him for a moment, and then shrugged at her own foolishness.  
  
"You know what? It doesn't even matter if I do or not. Totally doesn't matter. Because—"  
  
"He doesn't notice, anyway." He said it without a trace of recrimination, and more than a little recognition, and Chloe felt like she might really cry this time.  
  
"Right. But you know. Whatever." She tried to laugh, huskily, but instead it came out as a squeaky hiccup. Pathetic. "I'll get over it."  
  
"Sure." Whitney sniffed bitterly. "Anyway, the little prick seems to only have eyes for my girlfriend."  
  
"She doesn't do anything to discourage him," Chloe shot back evenly.  
  
Whitney physically winced, and he bowed his head, staring at his own hands. "Yeah. I – I know that." The words came out almost painfully, and Chloe felt genuinely sorry for him at that moment. Nearly as sorry as she felt for herself.  
  
"It's a pathetic losing battle, is what it is," she suddenly announced to no one in particular. "I know I'll never measure up to *her*. I'm not as sweet or— *kind* as she is. And I never will be, no matter how much I may want to be everything she is, just so he'll--" She paused. "God, that sounds mental."  
  
"Yeah, well, I'm never going to be Clark Fucking Kent, Perpetual Boy Scout."  
  
"Damn straight," Chloe snorted. "And… I'm not this perfectly understanding person, you know?"  
  
"Yeah, you're not. And I'm not… like, freaking noble."  
  
"Me either," Chloe said, and snickered just this side of hysterically. "I'm never gentle and. Agggh. *Good* like she is. I tend to be sarcastic actually. As a rule, even."  
  
"I can be one petty mother."  
  
"Totally are," Chloe agreed, and Whitney laughed too, feeling equally defeated as she. "I'm too stubborn," Chloe added.  
  
"As all hell," Whitney nodded, and then, a little ashamed -- "I have a really bad temper."  
  
"True," Chloe said, her words coming out faster now. "I'm, like, fatally nosy."  
  
"I'm the jealous type."  
  
"I complain a lot."  
  
"I get paranoid way too easily."  
  
"I could never spend hours hanging out with cheerleaders."  
  
"I can't even fake giving a shit about that food drive." He blushed at the confession as she snickered more.  
  
"I can't get through *War And Peace*!"  
  
"I can't stop wishing he'd screw up royally, just once."  
  
"I hate pink!"  
  
"I hate farms!"  
  
And they both stood there on the somber, poorly lit walkway, laughing uncontrollably, both of them relieved and simultaneously on the brink of tears.  
  
"I… can't be big enough to like him." He sobered up immediately, and looked at her, pleading for—what, exactly? Forgiveness, maybe.  
  
"It's OK," she breathed, suddenly serious too. "I can't be big enough to like her either. I've really wanted to… but in the end, I just can't."  
  
"Exactly."  
  
Their gazes locked silently, thoughtfully, in cascades of epiphany and frustration, and slowly, very slowly, she gave him a faint, shy smile that his expression acknowledged but didn't return.  
  
"It sucks. To be so flawed," he added.  
  
"Sure does," she agreed softly. "We're, like… defective. Compared to them, I mean."  
  
"Everybody is." He kicked at the curb with one toe, both of them feeling utterly hapless. "I would've given up a long time ago, except—"  
  
"Yeah, me too," she added, her cheeks flushing at the thought of someone—of Whitney Fordman, of all people—bearing witness to the deep, dark, unrequited Loserville of her heart. "Exactly."  
  
Just then, a pair of car head lights suddenly peeked out from behind the building's corner, and she turned to recognize the dent in the fender as belonging to her Dad's Buick. The familiar, hollow honking that followed echoed down the deserted street they were standing on.  
  
"Oh. Man. That's my Dad. I better go."  
  
"Yeah, I better head back too."  
  
"Yeah. Hey!"  
  
He turned back to look at her, and she couldn't quite remember ever having seen this boy looking quite that way before, not at anyone, expression so unguarded and hair gleaming sickly pale under the lamplight like an absurd and wholly inappropriate halo.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Nothing. Thanks."  
  
He nodded silently, all business and uncertain, before finally turning to head back again without a word. She silently watched him quickly fade into the darkness. Her heart was still with a clueless and beautiful dark- haired boy inside the Beanery, but her thoughts were troubled and found themselves suddenly sticking to a fairer one down a quiet Kansas side street.  
  
The dull, robust whine of the car horn nagged at her to snap out of her unwitting reverie. Chloe got in her father's car without a word, still sparing glances in the same direction.  
  
  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
Many thanks to Tresca's eagle eye for catching some pretty big plot holes, inconsistencies, and silly boo-boos such as my having written "she rolled his eyes." Yep, I'm a smart one. Any screw ups here are my own, though. 


	6. Present Tense

VI.  
  
She'd finally dragged herself to the opening of the Talon. By then, the party was in full force; live jazz hummed unobtrusively in the background and the rumble of multiple conversations were only interrupted by the occasional peals of laughter. She sighed nervously, her eyes wide and searching the place for a familiar face, and was dismayed to find that the place was too densely populated to see very far into the crowd.  
  
Chloe didn't like crowds, and she didn't really enjoy dressing up—not like other girls her age did, she knew. She was more comfortable in functional clothes and had been something of a tomboy all her life. It was only, Chloe had recently realized, after she met Clark Kent that she'd started making any efforts to girlify her wardrobe and wear makeup. How expertly she pulled it off was still totally up for debate between her ego and her insecurity.  
  
Her hand shot subconsciously to the glitter barrette lodged in her hair, and she sighed again and trudged ahead, determined to run into someone onto whom she could latch by sheer virtue of probability. It would have been nice to have had Pete there; Pete always put her in a good mood, and talked nearly as much as she did, and that would have helped calm her jitters from the very, very awful thing she suspected she'd just done… but she wasn't going to think about that just now. She was here for Clark (Pete's basketball practice be damned), and she was going to put on a happy face if it killed her. Or anyone else in the vicinity.  
  
"Wow," a young man's voice clearly said to her back. Chloe turned, praying it was someone she knew.  
  
Then she realized she maybe shouldn't have prayed quite so hard.  
  
"Hey, Whitney." Last person she wanted to see after their last, embarrassingly exposing conversation. She smiled tightly at him, resigned.  
  
"I hardly recognized you in the fancy get-up," he said, and slurped at what looked like white wine. Chloe noticed his cheeks were a little flushed and ruddy, and wondered how many of those he'd had already. She shook her head to clear it.  
  
"Did you get a hair cut?"  
  
"Yeah. Lana hates it," he confessed, and grinned. Definitely more than one glass, Chloe said, making a mental note.  
  
"I think it looks OK," she offered nonchalantly. "Know where I can get some food?"  
  
"Over there," Whitney said, pointing. He followed her inexplicably, as she sighed inwardly and kept her gaze fixed on the buffet.  
  
"Um. So how's the party so far?" she asked, scanning for anyone, anyone at all, that she could make a graceful exit onto.  
  
"I don't know. Itchy."  
  
She nearly choked on her newly poured punch. "I beg your pardon? Am I hearing things, or did you just say the party was *itchy*?"  
  
He leaned forward, uncharacteristically mischievous. "See, I only have one suit to wear to these things."  
  
"Ah. And it's itchy."  
  
"Right!" he said, and tapped her on the shoulder appreciatively.  
  
Her eyebrows creeping upward, Chloe pressed her lips together primly and watched him finish off his wine glass in one gulp. "Exactly how many of those have you had so far?"  
  
He answered her with only a wave as he grabbed another glass from the tray of a passing waiter. "It's my one night off in, like, weeks. Actually technically I'm supposed to be doing some precalculus. But screw that."  
  
"Screw that, huh?" she asked vaguely. Finally, her eyes landed on Clark. Her cheeks flushed with warmth… until he stepped to the side and revealed Lana standing directly in front of him. Lana was laughing and laughing, and fingering the lapel of his non-matching jacket lightly. Chloe felt like a cold wind had rushed into her insides suddenly.  
  
"Yeah, what's the point of doing good in school anymore?" Whitney shrugged, oblivious to the bitterness that had crept into his voice… and into her expression.  
  
"To graduate?" Chloe snorted, her eyes still on the scene before her. "I think you should sit down before you hurt yourself, Fordman." She watched, dismayed, as Clark leaned forward to whisper something into Lana's ear. The dark haired girl let forth new peals of giggles, and Chloe couldn't remember when Clark had ever looked quite so… pleased with himself.  
  
She spared Whitney only a casual glance, and her heart gave an inexplicable squeeze when she saw that Whitney's gaze had followed her own. Something seemed to break in his expression at the sight of Clark and Lana chatting so intimately. She looked away out of tact, chewing the inside of her cheek thoughtfully as she gazed at the food splayed out before her. Remarkably unsurprisingly, suddenly nothing looked appetizing. Only later did she notice that Whitney had given up on conversation with her entirely and had stormed off toward the door. That couldn't be good, as trashed as he was, she thought to herself, cursing the conscience that made her follow him out into the night.  
  
She found him standing on the curb, staring blankly into the night sky. "Um, hey, Fordman?"  
  
He spared her a backward glance. "Oh, hey you," Whitney said, a trace of glumness finally there.  
  
"Hey. I don't mean to be nosy, but… Are you gonna be all right?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm just *great*," he told her derisively.  
  
"You don't look so great."  
  
"I'm great," he growled.  
  
She nodded. "Um. Where are you going?"  
  
"Why do you care?" he snapped, then, regretting his harsh tone, he stared at his shoes. "Far away from *that* scene, I guess."  
  
"Oh." Chloe stared at him, at a loss as to what to say, and not feeling much like conversation anyway. "I know what you mean. I don't even know why I came, really."  
  
"Me either. And this suit--" Whitney rocked a little on his heels, tugging carelessly at his collar. "I'm into jeans and t-shirts. Sneakers."  
  
"Me too," Chloe agreed quickly.  
  
"You are not. You always wear—um. I dunno. Like colors and feathers and things like that. Crazy shoes."  
  
"Colors and—" Chloe cocked an eyebrow at him. "I'll try to take that in the spirit it was intended. Anyway how would you know?" Chloe clicked her tongue at him, and she took a step backwards subconsciously. She had no idea what she was doing standing in the spot she was, just then. She felt out of place inside with the dozens of people milling about, but she felt even more out of place here with this peculiar audience of one.  
  
For his part, Whitney gave her question some thought, and realized there was no way to answer that question that didn't sound even a little bit lascivious. He just gave her an embarrassed grin and a shrug in response.  
  
So, she noted mentally, much to her utter shock… Whitney Fordman noticed – apparently on a regular basis—the things she wore. Normally, this would have sent her into at least a minor tizzy, as there was, dismally, a veritable famine of positive male attention in her life lately. Especially from males who weren't meteor-mutated freaks. Especially from males who… well… looked like Whitney Fordman.  
  
But instead of the usual rush of adrenaline that would have immediately set up shop between her ego and her brain upon such a realization, she only felt a curious intrigue.  
  
Chloe realized she had been staring at Whitney for entirely too long, and he was staring back uncertainly, unable to keep her gaze for very long. Whether that was due to the copious amounts of alcohol he'd illegally consumed, or something else entirely, was wholly up for debate. She cocked her head at him, nodding knowingly. "Wow. I was totally right. You *are* a weirdo."  
  
"Am not." Whitney looked at her with his eyes dancing, and more than a little glazed over. She marveled briefly at the way he could smile and not- smile all at the same time. "You know what I can't get over?" he asked, slurring the last word a bit still.  
  
"I can't guess," she murmured. "Look, I'm gonna go back in—"  
  
"So far, this year has been totally fucked up!" He nodded slowly to himself for good measure, and Chloe rolled her eyes.  
  
"That it has," she agreed flatly. She pointed to the Talon's front door, where a couple she didn't recognize was stumbling out into the night, obliviously giggling to each other. "I actually haven't said hi to—"  
  
"Clark." Whitney nearly spat the name out, suddenly considerably more sober. He sniffed derisively. "Well, go right ahead then." He made an exaggeratedly chivalrous sweeping gesture with his arm… and nearly lost his balance. "I am sooooo sorry. I forgot for a minute that the whole fucking world revolves around Clark Fucking Kent."  
  
Chloe had begun to walk past him, but something venomous in his voice made her stop and face him. She maintained a steadfast poker face, but her voice was low and restrained. "I couldn't even begin to guess what your malfunction is, Fordman, but if you think I dragged myself to this party to listen to you get all emotional-drunk on me, you are so, so mistaken. Now if you'll excuse me—"  
  
"Everybody just worships Kent; everybody thinks he's so freakin' perfect," he went on, ignoring her. She had spun around on her heel to leave once more, and his biting tone had made her freeze and consider her response carefully. This time, though, there was no turning around to face him. She sighed, weary with the evening already, and she'd only been there fifteen minutes.  
  
"You're not exactly a boy scout, Fordman," she said, aiming for gentleness and hitting the mark a bit closer to sarcasm.  
  
"Yeah? Well, you don't even know me."  
  
Chloe laughed dryly. "I'm still not sure I want to."  
  
"What? Jesus, what's that about?"  
  
"Nothing," she replied innocently. "It's just that—"  
  
"Is this about that stupid scarecrow shit still?"  
  
"That was pretty damn memorable, you have to admit."  
  
"Great. I bet Kent went crying to you the instant he got a chance."  
  
"You'd be betting wrong… Pete told me." She sighed tensely, still not looking at him for fear that she would see a complete lack of contriteness on his face, and feel the need to slap him. "That was very humiliating for him, you know. You kinda went way beyond 'asshole' status there. You must realize that. I mean, like, hate-crime magnitude. You know that, right? And I don't know about you, but when someone does something like that to my best friend, I get a few qualms about becoming their buddy."  
  
"I'm going to be apologizing for that for the rest of my damn life," he muttered. But the genuine note of regret in his voice made her face him.  
  
She stared at him pointedly. "That might actually be a good start. Maybe."  
  
"It didn't seem so bad at the time."  
  
"Famous last words, Fordman."  
  
He smiled tentatively at her again, but she did not smile back.  
  
"You don't understand. It's just that every time I turn around, he's there… hovering. Over her."  
  
"You're telling me."  
  
"He's such—such a *tool*," Whitney cried suddenly. "I mean, why did he even forgive me? Just to be some kind of martyr?"  
  
"You're so wrong! That's just the way he—"  
  
"Probably just to get in better with my girl, too." And his words wounded her, and so she fell silent as he went on: "Heh. Fucking Clark Kent. What kind of a name is Clark, anyway? Who names their son Clark?"  
  
"Who names their son Whitney?" Chloe shot back, and after a split second, gave him her brightest smile.  
  
He glared at her. "It's a *family* name."  
  
She ignored him utterly. "You know what, none of your constant bitching is about Clark, anyway. It's about you being, like, incredibly insecure and—" and she recalled Clark's angry ranting at her in his barn, and glanced at Whitney's suddenly terrified expression, and she stopped herself. "I don't know. You two just bring out the worst in each other, I guess."  
  
"I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this," Whitney said, suddenly narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously. "You just finished telling me you don't even like me. You're all hung up on him just like everybody else. Hell, I think even that Luthor guy has a thing for him."  
  
Chloe's mouth opened to say something in her own defense… and then the last part of his rant fully hit her. And she threw her head back and guffawed mightily, her voice echoing merrily down the streets. And she couldn't stop laughing. Shrieking with laughter, she jumped up and down and grabbed both his biceps, shaking him cheerfully as he half-smiled at her with a questioning look.  
  
"Do you have any idea how long I've been saying that?" she cried conspiratorially. "He is so totally hung up on Clark! Nobody will believe me when I say it!"  
  
Whitney's eyes and grin both widened. "Oh, my God, it's so obvious! He's, like, in love!" Chloe cackled some more, thrilled with this much-needed validation that was coming out of nowhere, and eventually his grin turned into a snicker, too. He grabbed her elbow and leaned forward to do his best impression of the younger Luthor.  
  
"He's always, like, 'Clark, I'll do *anything* for my friends.' Yeah, especially the ones he wants to bone."  
  
Chloe actually snorted loudly, she was laughing so hard. "Dude, you totally should have seen the way he was checking Clark out when I went to the mansion with them!" And that's all it took for Whitney to start cackling too.  
  
Which made it the perfect moment for Lana and Clark to come out of the Talon, cozily arm in arm. Four smiles got wiped away *very* quickly, and four teenagers screeched to a halt, everyone present exchanging wide-eyed, guilty stares.  
  
Lana was the first to speak. She dropped her hand from the crook of Clark's elbow at exactly the same time Whitney's hand dropped from Chloe's arm. And try as she might, Lana could not keep the accusatory question out of her voice. "Um. Hi, Chloe, glad you could make it. Actually, I didn't even know you were here."  
  
Chloe was at a loss for an explanation. "I just— I—"  
  
"Chloe hasn't even been inside yet," Whitney explained. "I was out here getting some fresh air, and she was just on her way in."  
  
Chloe smiled gamely at Clark and Lana. Clark was the only one who returned it.  
  
"Good to see you, Chloe," he said. "You ought to head inside—they've got your favorite: key lime pie."  
  
"Sounds… sounds great." She swallowed, and endured the tense silence only a few more seconds before offering, "I think I'll go inside and check that out now."  
  
"OK," Lana said, and gave her a smile that did not touch her eyes.  
  
Chloe, for her part, spared Whitney only a peripheral glance and a muttered, "Bye." He nodded imperceptibly in her direction, but she was halfway to the door by then.  
  
"Everything all right, Whitney?" Clark asked, and damn him a thousand times for being so earnest.  
  
"Everything's great," he answered, rubbing his eyebrow. "It's just, you know, not really my kind of scene in there… uh…"  
  
"Oh, my God. Are you drunk?" Lana sounded vaguely disgusted.  
  
"Uh… no, I mean, you know, had a little wine—"  
  
"You drank alcohol illegally in my restaurant on opening night?" she took a horrified step towards him, and his face went slack with the realization.  
  
"I'm—I didn't think—"  
  
"Well, that's' obvious that you didn't *think*, Whitney," she retorted, her eyes still wide with shock. "Are you crazy? You could have gotten us closed down the first night we're open!"  
  
Clark cleared his throat, uncomfortable. "I'm—going back inside." The couple ignored him completely, only waiting until he was clearly out of earshot before proceeding.  
  
"I can't believe you'd be so inconsiderate and thoughtless!" Lana hissed, and immediately his face turned stony and expressionless.  
  
"I said I was sorry."  
  
"Yeah, well, you know—sorry isn't always good enough, you know that?" She was practically spitting in his face now. He couldn't recall the last time he'd seen her that furious. "You keep doing these incredibly destructive things and then thinking that saying 'I'm sorry' is going to fix everything, but you're *wrong*! You know how much the Talon means to me! What is wrong with you, Whitney? Why can't you think about anyone but yourself for once?"  
  
At that moment, he wanted to scream, break something, punch a wall. His stomach twisted at this sudden transition from giddy buzz to something that stopped just short of panic. "For *once*? All I ever do is not think about myself!"  
  
"Oh, and I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?" she scoffed. "You could have gotten us closed down, our license taken away—if anyone had seen you…"  
  
"Nobody saw me!" he cried helplessly.  
  
"Oh, right. Nobody but Chloe."  
  
This put a halt to his racing anxiety. He stared at her, his expression studiously neutral. "What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Nothing. It's just a little surprising that you guys have become such close friends so quickly."  
  
"We're not—we were just—" he suddenly shifted his posture and leveled his gaze at her. "You know what? If you can have a friend like Kent, I can occasionally talk to Chloe without having to explain myself." And the way she blanched was viciously satisfying to him. "I don't have anybody just to talk to anymore!"  
  
"You've got me," Lana said, very near to whining.  
  
He pressed his lips together quietly, and contemplated her a moment before saying, "Yeah. Well… I think I'm going to head on home now." He turned to leave, but she caught him by the elbow.  
  
"Whitney, wait." And he, like the chump he thoroughly knew he was, waited.  
  
"Let's not fight. I just… wish you wouldn't do such reckless things sometimes," she finally said. Her large brown eyes gazed up at him, and he couldn't help but soften towards her.  
  
He sighed and nodded. "I really am sorry. But I mean, everybody makes mistakes." Except Kent, he thought bitterly to himself. Betcha Kent wouldn't even consider drinking at all until he was well past age twenty- one.  
  
She just nodded slowly, and the hand clutching at his arm turned into a familiar caress. "Are you going to be OK?"  
  
He sighed. Oddly enough, a part of him no longer wanted to leave, and he stared at the door of the Talon, lost in thought. "Sure, I'll be fine," he murmured, not sure what he was looking for just then.  
  
And for the first time, when she kissed him, he noticed how very tentative her kisses were—had always been. For the first time, he noted how unmistakably mechanical and dispassionate her lips had always felt against his.  
  
For the first time in almost two years, he had to make himself kiss her back.  
  
  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  
  
I'm really sorry it took me so long to put this one together. Spoilers for "Zero". Chapter 7 will probably contain spoilers for "Nicodemus", and then after that, this will permanently become an AU. Hee.  
  
Also, please don't kill me re: what I did to the Clex. Finally, long live Tresca and wookie, of awesome beta-reader-ness!!!!! 


	7. Indefinite Determiners

VII.  
  
"So how was the Talon's grand opening party last night?" Pete asked through a mouthful of BLT the next day. Clark and Chloe exchanged uneasy looks.  
  
"It was OK," Clark conceded slowly.  
  
"Um. Yeah. The food rocked."  
  
"Uh oh." Pete raised his eyebrows and smirked knowingly. "What did I miss?"  
  
Clark grinned. "Well, Whitney Fordman got trashed on too much wine."  
  
"Candy ass!" Chloe cried, and grinned too.  
  
"Then he went outside and bumped into Chloe—"  
  
"Then Lana came outside, and then Ken and Barbie had a lover's quarrel." Chloe was positively crowing. "I unfortunately missed it. Clark told me all about it."  
  
"Ohh, what was it about?" Pete leaned forward excitedly.  
  
"Oh, for God's sake, you two are worse than a pair of old women!" she exclaimed, and the boys threw her a pair of abashed grins.  
  
"You sure seem to be getting along pretty good with Whitney these days," Clark teased gently. But the way his eyes had darkened ever so slightly wasn't lost on her. "You two were in hysterics when we got outside."  
  
Chloe ignored Pete's sky-high eyebrows in her direction just then. "OK, you're totally exaggerating."  
  
"Am not," Clark said in mock-defensiveness. "He was grabbing your arm, and leaning into you, and you were giggling like crazy."  
  
"Ohhh," Pete repeated, again ignored by her.  
  
"I so was not giggling."  
  
"You so were."  
  
"What*ever*!"  
  
"What is up with that, Sullivan?" Pete elbowed her too roughly in the rib. "Since when has Whitney Fordman been the soul of wit? I always thought there was a perfectly valid reason why all the geeks call him Whitless behind his back."  
  
"Hmmm," Chloe chewed a French fry thoughtfully. "Not entirely true. He's got a very, very dry sense of humor."  
  
Clark rolled his eyes. "I can't believe you guys are getting chummy."  
  
"It's not like we're hanging out all the time!" she protested. "We're not chummy. We're just on civil speaking terms. Is that OK with you? Jeez."  
  
"OK, OK, calm down!" Clark laughed.  
  
"I guess Whitney can be OK, deep down inside," Pete admitted reluctantly.  
  
"Way deep down," Clark added.  
  
Pete nodded. "Way, *way* deep down."  
  
"And be careful not to blink, because you might miss it."  
  
Chloe rolled her eyes for what must have been the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. Sometimes these two were just incorrigible. "You guys are, like, twelve years old, right?"  
  
Clark and Pete chuckled gleefully and high-fived across the table.  
  
"So, what's the deal with after school today?" Chloe said, grateful for the subject change.  
  
"I've got b-ball practice again," Pete shrugged.  
  
"Great! Maybe they'll actually let you get off the bench one of these days," Chloe said innocently, and Clark hid a smile.  
  
Pete's deadpan just made her smirk widen. "You suck, you know that, Sullivan?"  
  
"Sullivan—one. Ross—zero! Ka-ching!" she turned to Clark. "How about you? Up for some trig reviewing?"  
  
"I can't, I promised I'd help Lana with that food drive."  
  
At the mention of her name, Chloe's eyes darted away. Her gaze wandered fitfully across the cafeteria before finally resting on the back of Lana's head a few tables across, sitting across from Whitney, of course. For a split second, he held her gaze, raising an eyebrow slightly at her in recognition before looking away again.  
  
She ducked her head slightly, and cleared her throat. "Um. Cool. Who's sponsoring the food drive? Maybe I can do a piece for the paper about the organization; you know, maybe how people can keep on helping even after the food drive's over."  
  
"That's a great idea, Chloe," Clark nodded enthusiastically. "I think it's sponsored by some agency called Good Samaritan Charities."  
  
Chloe furrowed her eyebrows in thought. "They're not local, I don't think."  
  
"No, they're based in Metropolis."  
  
"Sounds great," Chloe nodded. "I'll see what I can find on their stats on the Internet during study period and come and do a full story on them. Maybe I can interview their rep, if there's going to be one there."  
  
"That would be really great," Clark agreed. "Thanks a lot, Chloe. I know that would really mean a lot to Lana, too."  
  
She only managed to smile wanly at him in response.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
Google.com was Chloe's friend. Oh yes. A very dear, valuable, intimate friend, matter of fact. In the past year, she had become an expert on hunting down the most obscure facts about the most obtuse subjects with the aid of her favorite trusty search engine. She never ceased to be amazed at the endless minutiae of information that was so meticulously documented on the Internet for her delving enjoyment.  
  
A search for a Metropolis charity, she knew, would reap endless results. She sat down at one of the library's ancient PCs, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no teacher was nearby enough to snoop and notice she wasn't actually studying during her study period, and she quickly pulled up the web site, typing in *Good Samaritan Charities Metropolis* at lightning speed.  
  
It was with no small degree of shock, then, that she read the results of the search. With each click of a link, her eyes grew wider and her outrage expanded. With a determined set to her jaw, she clicked on the PRINT icon for the first of many times that day.  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
"That's really nice of you to offer, Whitney, but I think Clark and I can handle it," Lana told Whitney sweetly before last period.  
  
Whitney's nostrils flared slightly at the mention, but to his credit, he remained impressively controlled. "I said I would help you with the food drive, and… even if I can't help out as much as I said I would, I at least would like to stop by and lend a hand for a few minutes."  
  
"It's just that—"  
  
"I mean, I could help out moving a few boxes and things like that."  
  
"I don't think that'll really—"  
  
"What's the matter, don't you want me there?" And even he was taken aback by the bitterness in his own voice. Her eyes widened at him.  
  
"Whitney! That's not it at all," she assured him. "You know I do."  
  
Do I? He asked himself… but he stayed silent, watching her intently.  
  
"It's just that I know you're stretched so thin lately."  
  
"I can stop by after school before heading to Metropolis to see my Dad," he insisted. "He's not expecting me till after six, so I've got about a half hour to an hour to hang out and help."  
  
Lana pressed her lips together before smiling uncertainly and nodding. "That would be great. Thanks, Whitney." The warning bell rang, and she gave him a quick peck on the cheek before darting off to her class.  
  
Whitney watched her retreating back with no small degree of sullenness. He couldn't help remembering the spiteful, vehement words with which she had lashed out at him the week before.  
  
*I'm only staying with you out of guilt.*  
  
*I'm sick of your excuses.*  
  
*It's over, Whitney.*  
  
But then a few days later:  
  
*I was so sick, Whitney.*  
  
*I don't even remember what I said.*  
  
*Whatever was wrong with me … it made you say crazy things you don't really mean.*  
  
*Please believe me, Whitney. I want to be with you so much.*  
  
And what had startled him most wasn't that (although he had finally relented and said otherwise) he did not, in fact believe her. At all.  
  
It was that it hadn't hurt nearly as much as he thought it would. It was the quiet resignation with which he had been prepared to just walk away and nurse his wounds and get on with the rest of his life.  
  
It was the fact that, although he had taken her back, ostensibly with all forgiven and forgotten, there was a very small part of him that was already sorry he had. 


	8. Present Progressive

VIII.  
  
"OK, so where do I put this box?" Clark asked, his face peeking out from behind the enormous box of cans he carried with surprising ease in his arms. Lana stared briefly before pointing to an empty spot on the nearby platform.  
  
"Over there's fine," she told him. "Wow, you are *strong*."  
  
She watched him get flustered and actually shrug with the box still in his arms. "Farm work," he called back simply, by virtue of an explanation. It was amazing, nonetheless. That box must have weighed well over a hundred pounds, and Clark was practically skipping up the stairs with it onto the platform.  
  
The food drive, much to Lana's extreme pleasure, was a huge hit. All of their hand-painted signs, the personal speeches she'd given in each of her classes, flyers, and phone call reminders to individual students' homes had really paid off. Some teachers brought in entire boxes of nonperishables all by themselves. One student brought in bags of cornmeal from her family's mills on her pick up truck. There were so many donations that, half an hour into the drive, they were quickly running out of ground in front of the library to put it all.  
  
She surveyed the hustle and bustle before her, contemplating the mammoth amount of effort that had gone into organizing such an event, and smiled with pride at the way that Clark was so easily able to handle so many of the organizational details today. She was eternally grateful that he'd picked up her slack on so many particulars.  
  
Lana scribbled notes and greeted and directed incoming students with armfuls of donations as she watched Clark make run after run up the stone steps. He had a remarkable agility for such a tall boy. She found herself wondering if she'd ever noticed how truly graceful and quick Clark was; how lithe his movements were despite his large frame, how very powerful he-- -  
  
"Hey, sorry I'm late." Whitney's voice flatly snapped her out of her thoughtful reverie.  
  
"Oh! Hey, you!" Lana gave him her best cheerleader smile. He smiled back at her after a moment.  
  
"Hi. I can't stay for long, but as long as I'm here… where do you need me?"  
  
"Well, I think Clark could probably use a little help piling up the boxes as they get filled." She gestured to several large boxes practically brimming with boxes, cans and bags of legumes.  
  
Whitney watched, faintly dismayed, as Clark heaved up one of the boxes without even breaking a sweat. He nodded briskly and headed over to one of the boxes. He was positively disgusted with himself when he had to put both knees into lifting one, and he was quite sure he was rather red and sweaty by the time he had managed to get fully upright with one. Even then, the box slipped momentarily, and once he'd steadied it with the aid of one knee, his fingers ached in protest all the way up the stairs. It was the same with all of the boxes. Clark passed him easily, putting away two boxes for every one Whitney managed. Damn, but he was out of shape. Whitney cursed his lack of time and resolved to sleep considerably less than he already was just to get in some extra training. He'd be damned if a freshman could show him up in any display of strength or speed.  
  
On tucking in the top of his fourth box, Whitney noticed a colorful purple blur out of the corner of his left eye. He turned to spot Chloe chasing after a hapless looking middle aged man, who looked as though he were currently in the midst of physically restraining himself from throttling Chloe full-on. Nonplussed by the man's reddening neck and forehead, she thrust her tiny tape recorder at him insistently. Whitney cocked his ear to eavesdrop as he neared them on the way back to Lana's table.  
  
"—aware that your organization has instituted these policies? Do you personally support them?" she was asking him, earnest determination setting her features. The man rolled his eyes and faced her, and it was only then that Whitney saw that the man's name tag bore the Good Samaritan Charities logo. Whitney slowed to a halt, poking Chloe in the ribs with his finger as a greeting.  
  
"Hey, what's up," she muttered, without turning around.  
  
"What's up," he muttered in response, watching the older man scowl at Chloe with all his might.  
  
"Look, Missy, I've had just about enough out of you and your questions," he fumed. "You're getting underfoot while we're trying to do some real work here, and I most certainly do not appreciate—"  
  
"Hey, what's going on here?" Clark asked, his face a mask of wary concern.  
  
"What's going on is that this—" the man, whose name tag identified him as Bob Niven, jabbed a finger in Chloe's direction with great contempt—"this young *lady* here has been harassing me for a good quarter of an hour about her newspaper, and I've plainly told her I'm not interested."  
  
"It's OK, Mr. Niven, I'll take care of this," Clark told him reassuringly with a pat on his arm. Mr. Niven stormed off in disgust as Clark turned to Chloe, watching Whitney walk down the stairs ever so slowly.  
  
"Chloe, what are you doing?" Clark asked her. "You completely ticked that guy off."  
  
"I'm doing an expose on Good Samaritan Charities' policies," Chloe reported cheerfully.  
  
"You're doing a what?!" Clark asked. He crossed his arms and stared down at Chloe down the bridge of his nose, and Chloe seemed to cringe slightly. She began again, considerably less sure of herself this time.  
  
"Well, I was… I looked them up on the Internet and apparently they've been pretty controversial all over the country," she said, gaining confidence with every word. "Apparently they're an extreme right-wing religious group that requires people to take a copy of the New Testament before they're given anything from the pantry."  
  
"So?"  
  
"So! They won't feed anyone who believes any differently than they do!" Chloe went on, her words tumbling out of her with trademark conspiratorial zeal. "But the fact that's caused the most controversy is that they also have a clear cut policy of not hiring anyone who is openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or living with someone extramaritally. They also reserve the right to fire anyone who lies about it on their application! I mean, can you believe that?" By this time, Lana had come over to see what the commotion was about, her apprehension made plain in her expression.  
  
"Chloe, they spend every day feeding hungry people," Clark explained slowly, as though he were speaking to a very, very petulant child. "Who cares how they run their hiring practices?"  
  
"I do," Chloe said, nervously glancing between Lana and Clark. "And you should too! They're getting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations and cash, and they spend every day perpetuating bigotry and hatemongering. It's kind of our moral obligation to not support these people. I'm going to write about this in my editorial."  
  
"Chloe! I'll look like a fool for supporting them!" Lana cried out, appalled. "I—I didn't know they were like that—you believe me, right, Clark?"  
  
"No, I know that," Clark nodded, and put his hand on her shoulder sympathetically. Whitney, passing behind Chloe with another box in his arm, saw the scene and turned his face away just quick enough to hide his eye-rolling. Another plop of the box on the platform, and Whitney was heading towards them once again.  
  
"Well, I'm sorry, Lana, but you chose to become involved with a charity without researching its internal policies," Chloe shook her head slowly. "I'm not doing this to embarrass you, but these policies are archaic and hateful and people have a right to know what they're really contributing to."  
  
"Chloe, how could you do this to Lana after she's worked so hard on this food drive?"  
  
"That's another thing, Clark," Chloe began, pocketing her tape recorder. "Did you know that none of this food is going to any indigent families in Smallville? It's going to the GSC-run shelters in Metropolis, where they can control the output and who gets to be fed. It's totally fascist!"  
  
Whitney whistled behind her. "Damn, that's pretty harsh." He nodded in sympathy, ignoring the glowers from both Lana and Clark.  
  
"Whitney, stay out of this," Lana snapped, and turned back to Chloe. "Chloe, I can't believe you're even considering doing this story and humiliating me in front of the whole school."  
  
"Lana, this has nothing to do with you," Chloe exclaimed, amazed at how practiced the other girl was at making herself the center of every conversation. "I wasn't even planning on mentioning your name, I was just—"  
  
"Well, hello, everyone is here to see Lana heading this," Clark pointed out, his eyes blazing. "It's not exactly a secret."  
  
"These are major civil rights issues that deserve—"  
  
"No, Chloe, these are your friends that you're going to humiliate just to get some pointless story for your stupid paper!" Clark shouted, instantly regretting his words with a sharp intake of breath. He sighed tensely into the shocked silence that had slammed down on all of them, the guilt immediately tugging at him as he watched Chloe's eyes spring with tears.  
  
"M—my stupid—right." She nodded, willing her chin to stop quivering, and the next moment she was fleeing as fast as her feet would take her.  
  
In silence, Whitney watched her lavender boa-scarf sail behind her until she disappeared into the school, barely listening to his now-hysterical girlfriend being consoled by Kent.  
  
"I can't believe you treated her like that," Whitney muttered, shaking his head in disgust.  
  
"What?" Clark stared at him, taken aback.  
  
"I said," he repeated, enunciating every word with pointed sarcasm, "That I can't believe you treated her like that."  
  
Clark's eyes narrowed resentfully. "You know, you can just feel free to stay out of this, OK, Whitney?"  
  
"No, I won't," Whitney retorted. "She's totally right. These people are bigots. Why would you want to give them any good PR?"  
  
"Whitney! I can't believe you're defending what she was trying to do to me!" Lana said, blinking back her own hurt tears. Whitney noted with faint surprise that for once, he found her distress not remotely poignant.  
  
"Like she said, it wasn't about you, Lana," he told her, an edge of disdain unwittingly creeping into his voice. "It was about something that needed protesting and she just wanted to use her paper to bring awareness to it. Weren't either of you even listening? Jesus! It was a good cause!"  
  
By this point, Clark was positively livid—sputtering even. "Great, see, I forgot you're Chloe's new best friend!"  
  
"Oh, right, see, I forgot you turn into a pushy prick when it comes to my girlfriend," Whitney shot back. He noted with great rancor that Clark blushed tellingly.  
  
"I am getting really sick of your bad attitude, Fordman."  
  
"Yeah? I'm getting really sick of your sanctimony."  
  
"Oh, nice, did Chloe teach you a new word?"  
  
And that's all it took for Whitney to shove Clark roughly with both palms. Within two seconds they were glaring at each other virtually nose to nose.  
  
"Whitney! Stop it!" Horrified, Lana rushed between them, staring Whitney down with all her might. "What is wrong with you!? How can you act this way? I mean, God, at least Clark appreciates all the hard work I've put into this!"  
  
Whitney opened his mouth to respond… then thought better of it. He regarded them both briefly before saying, "You know what? Screw this. I'm leaving before I puke." Whitney shoved his way past Clark and stomped down the stairs. Without even consciously deciding to do it, he found himself heading toward the main building in no particular hurry, realizing with a dull pang that no one was following after him or trying to stop him.  
  
  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
She was exactly where he thought he'd find her, on the dilapidated couch in the farthest corner of the Torch's office, Kleenex box firmly in her lap as she sobbed softly.  
  
But Chloe composed herself in a split second the instant she saw him, tossing the tissue box aside and the small pile of used Kleenex into the nearest garbage pail, though she refused to meet his eyes. She was cursed with the kind of complexion that gifted her with red noses and puffy eyes the instant she shed single tear, and the last thing she wanted was to be humiliated yet again in front of anyone.  
  
Chloe sniffed audibly and cleared her throat. "Hey."  
  
He opened the door a little wider, but didn't step inside. "Hey. You OK?"  
  
"Sure. I'm fine. I was—" she drew a shaky breath and tried again. "I was just leaving." She began gathering her things for good measure, her gaze still glued to the floor tiles.  
  
"No—hey, don't." He sighed, and leaned against the doorframe. "They were jerks, and you were right."  
  
She looked up at him gratefully, red-rimmed eyes and all, her face a sudden landscape of surprised vulnerability. Then the next minute, her expression was shuttered once more.  
  
"Yeah, thanks," she said flatly. "I think I should just go home before I make an even bigger mess of things."  
  
And he blurted out suddenly, "I just got into a huge fight with both of them."  
  
That stopped her in her tracks, and she knit her eyebrows together. "You're kidding."  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Over m—" she blushed and stopped herself. "Over what just happened?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
"Wow." She was taken aback, but he also saw that she was pleased. Touched. "Thanks, Fordman. You didn't have to do that."  
  
"I know I didn't," Whitney shrugged. "But they were acting like assholes."  
  
Her eyebrows crept upward in question, but she just blinked, finally dry- eyed.  
  
"Listen-- what are you doing right now?" he asked, suddenly considerably more animated.  
  
"I'm… going home, I guess," Chloe answered cautiously. "Why?"  
  
"I dunno. Come with me to Metropolis."  
  
"What? Like, now?!"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Are you insane?"  
  
"Look… I have to go drop stuff off for my dad. You don't have to be anywhere. Why not? I mean, we're kinda like… almost friends, right?"  
  
"I… guess," she conceded, cursing a complexion that blushed so damn readily.  
  
"So-o-o…. friends hang out sometimes," he added.  
  
A curious smile crept slowly across Chloe's face. "Metropolis? I don't know…"  
  
"Oh, come on. Hey… there's this great drive-through donut shop I go to on the way," he said, keeping his tone and expression neutral. "I'll get a dozen and we can pig out."  
  
That prompted a full-on thousand-watt grin from Chloe, the kind that made her eyes virtually disappear. He had to grin back.  
  
"Free donuts, huh?"  
  
"Free donuts!" he nodded with mock-finality. "Come on." He started toward the door, tugging gently on her coat sleeve.  
  
She peered at him, her face a cross between suspicion and amusement, before finally relenting and stumbling after him. "I have to call my dad…"  
  
"You can use Lana's cell phone," Whitney crowed happily. "She left it in my truck!"  
  
Chloe's laughter resonated down the entire hallway.  
  
  
  
*To Be Continued*………………………………..  
  
  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
AUTHORS NOTES:  
  
wookie in da haaaaouuuuuuuuussssse!! Seriously without wookie1013, this chapter would have made ZERO sense. Go read her awesome Ch/W fic now!!! She's in my favorites and a real talent. ( 


	9. Active Tense

This chapter has been revised upon the advice of someone who flamed my fanfic. Her feedback was pretty stupid, but it made me realize that I had to make the unconventional nature of the relationship between Chloe and her Dad a lot more explicit to make the events of this chapter plausible. So, thanks, lame flamer!  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
IX.  
  
Never before had Whitney met anyone who could type on a laptop in a moving vehicle, theorize on meteor rock mutations in Smallville, cry over unrequited love, stuff her face with glazed chocolate donuts, groove to the Pink song on the radio, AND complain about his driving all at once. She talked so much—by turns muffled by the donuts and then rattling clear as a bell and then back to snarfing—that an hour and a half into their trip, he was seriously starting to regret having invited her along. What had he been thinking? What had possessed him to invite this peculiar, vaguely irritating person to spend the next eight or nine hours of his life with him?  
  
Oh, yeah. Because he was a big sap who couldn't stand to see a girl cry. Even a girl that was cheerfully capable of getting on his last nerve. Besides, maybe it was masochistic empathy, but he hated seeing someone attempt something they were passionate about, only to have their attempt squashed by life's circumstances and unthinking cruelty. He realized that what had happened today between them all would be no big deal in anyone's version of "the long run." But… Chloe's eyes had been blazing with determination when she had tried to get that scoop about Good Samaritan Charities, and it had been a righteous cause. He had to grudgingly admit that she'd deserved that story for her paper, and Kent had to come along and piss on her parade like he usually did.  
  
Kent and Lana.  
  
He flinched at the reminder, although a quick glancing check assured him that it had gone unnoticed by Chloe, who was still prattling on obliviously to her father on the cell phone.  
  
It should really have come to no surprise to Whitney that apparently Chloe's father could gab just as much as Chloe could. She and Mr. Sullivan had spent a solid twenty minutes apparently interrupting and speaking over each other continually. Hell, that's what he assumed was going on, as it had mostly been a continual monologue on Chloe's end, so that the only way Whitney could tell that her father was talking too was the fact that her monologue seemed to occasionally include responses to actual questions.  
  
It was impressive, really, this mode of communication that the Sullivans had apparently worked out among themselves. He was starting to get the strong impression that Chloe never did things the conventional, easy way.  
  
What had most impressed Whitney, though, was the easy manner in which arguing over Chloe's curfew and the sheer boneheadedness of her impromptu departure for Metropolis with a boy she barely knew seemed to be so amicably interspersed with innocuous dialogue about Chloe's day, their new cat, Gabe's muffler (it was making a weird wheezing noise), the previous evening's episode of Six Feet Under (from what Whitney could tell, some woman named Ruth seemed to be both Gabe and Chloe's favorite character, although during one particularly long lapse in Chloe's chattering—and by long, he meant ten seconds or so-- it appeared Gabe didn't quite get one of the plot points of the last episode, so Chloe had to explain it-- twice) and a short, but apparently happy reminiscence of the disastrous last time the Sullivans had tried to barbecue.  
  
Whitney found himself wondering when these people ever had time to do anything *but* talk. Exactly how long was it going to take the girl to explain that she was going to be home late? And he felt an instantaneous and childish pang of envy at the warm camaraderie that she and Mr. Sullivan seemed to share, at the way in which Chloe's features were relaxed and bright. There was certainly no such phenomenon happening at the Fordman house.  
  
His own house had always been a remarkably quiet place interrupted with occasional exclamations —eerily quiet now, since his father's booming voice was no longer resonating through the hallways with demands and appraisals. By contrast, his mother was a very slight woman whose tentative voice rarely rose above a whisper. Whitney often thought she seemed to be walking on eggshells, which was strange, really, as no one in the house had a particularly bad temper. His father wasn't an especially violent man … but then, his father sure wasn't the type to ever be afraid to be heard.  
  
The elder Mr. Fordman was a man whose interpersonal skills had been conditioned by a lifetime of giving orders to employees. A good employee, he often informed his family, was never defiant; if an employee ever was, it was with full knowledge that there would be swift consequences, which most often included quickly meted-out disapproval, restriction of privileges, and, depending on the severity of the infraction, a thorough and public tongue-lashing. With no doubt the best of intentions (which paved the way to hell, as Whitney's granny had often pointed out), Mr. Fordman had run his household very much the way he'd run his store his entire life. A successful system was, after all, a successful system, and why tamper with success?  
  
Whitney sometimes—only fleetingly, really—recalled that as a small child, upon hearing his father wax philosophical about this analogy, he'd been secretly terrified of being fired. Stupid now, but back then its probability had been decided upon with the kind of assured finality one rarely retains past age ten. His mother had only smiled wanly and smoothed his hair down when he'd expressed this fear to her. Called him silly, maybe. He couldn't remember.  
  
Whitney had almost tuned Chloe's incessant stream of chattering out when he realized Chloe was actually talking to *him*. "—wants to know if you're a safe driver."  
  
"If I'm—" the question took him aback, and he remembered with embarrassment that this was the third truck he'd owned in a year. "Sheeyeah. I'm freakin' a great driver," he said, entirely too defensive.  
  
She blinked at him, and peered at his speedometer, noting that he immediately slowed down nearly 15 mph under her scrutiny. Giving him a very hard look indeed, she said into the phone breezily, "Yeah Daddy, don't worry, he drives like a grandmother."  
  
"Damn straight," Whitney muttered, doggedly not meeting her gaze.  
  
She ignored him. "OK, Daddy. I know, I know. I—" she paused and pressed the phone against her shoulder to mute it. "My Dad wants to know what time I'll be home."  
  
"I dunno. Midnight, maybe," he shrugged, surreptitiously speeding up again. "I mean, you know, at night the roads are empty and I can usually make the trip in two hours--"  
  
"I can't tell my Dad that!" She hissed. Then, sighing, she said into the phone, "We'll be home by midnight. Yeah, I know it's a—no, I'm going to get all my homework done on the way and back, I promise. No, I know, it's not a regular thing. Sure. No, I will. Like I said, he's a really safe driver."  
  
"I am!" Whitney added for emphasis. Chloe ducked her head, hiding a knowing grin.  
  
"OK. I love you too. I will." She hung up, and fingered the keypad thoughtfully. Whitney gave her a passing glance.  
  
"Something wrong?"  
  
"Nah," Chloe said, giving him a small smile. "Just that-" She rolled her eyes at her own sentimentality. "My mom lives in Metropolis and-- I dunno."  
  
"Oh." Whitney leaned back in his seat some, feeling awkward suddenly. "You wanna stop by and see her? I can drop you off when I—"  
  
"No, it's OK," Chloe hurried to interrupt him. "I mean, I can't just drop by unannounced. She's… probably not even home."  
  
"You should give her a call. Maybe--"  
  
"Butt out, Fordman." But her tone was teasing, light… if a little wistful. He just nodded briskly, keeping his gaze fixed on the road.  
  
"I can't believe he didn't flip out that you just took off like that."  
  
Chloe shrugged and smiled to herself with great affection. "My parents were kind of hippies in their day. You know. Peace, love, granola. Lots of pot."  
  
Whitney glanced between her and the road, incredulous. He'd never heard of parents like that. He tried to picture his dad in a headband and love beads, hair and beard long and grizzly, and he nearly swerved off the road in shock at the very thought.  
  
"Wow. Can't imagine what that's like."  
  
"It's cool most of the time," Chloe said. "I mean… I know it sounds crazy, but when I was younger, I kind of wished they were a little stricter. You know, more like other people's parents. But now it's mostly cool. Despite the fact that he totally makes me want to hide under my bed with his corny jokes sometimes… we're really close. I mean, I know I'm lucky, you know? My dad trusts me a lot, and I can pretty much talk to him about anything."  
  
"My dad is *nothing* like that," Whitney blurted out. He suddenly looked ashamed at the admission.  
  
"Yeah?" Chloe asked, suddenly feeling strangely cautious. "What's he like?"  
  
"Uh. Well." Whitney sighed. "He's used to being his own boss, I guess." And everybody else's, he added to himself silently. "He's the kind of guy that wore suits to school when he was a kid. You know?"  
  
"Wow," Chloe murmured. "I guess that explains a lot."  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Nothing. Just that maybe being a little uptight runs in the Fordman family," she murmured casually.  
  
"I'm not uptight!!" But the irony of his overly intense response wasn't lost on either of them. He glared at the road ahead of him in defeat as she hid her smirk into her shoulder, feigning a gaze out the window instead.  
  
They drove in easy silence for a few minutes, lost in thought about the place ahead of them and its inhabitants, until the phone's jingly ring tone jarred them both from their contemplating.  
  
"The Nutcracker Suite as a ring tone?" Chloe muttered, fumbling for the phone. "Lana's got a little Russian fixation, huh?" She pressed the TALK button and put the phone to her ear in one swift movement.  
  
Chloe opened her mouth to say "Hello", but never quite made it. In fact, she seemed to be having a hard time finding any place in the other person's conversation to get a word in edgewise, which was, for Chloe, remarkable unto itself. It didn't take long for her to thrust out the phone towards him with barely concealed derision.  
  
"It's for you," she said flatly. After a questioning, cocked eyebrow from him, she added in her most saccharinely sarcastic voice, "It's Lana. I believe she's looking for you. She sounds a little tiny bit upset."  
  
Whitney tapped his fingers on the steering wheel cagily before taking the phone with a resigned sigh. "Hey, it's me," he said. The faint chirruping immediately stopped. "Chloe. It was Chloe." Another pause, and more eye- rolling from Whitney. His eyes met Chloe's in a silent plea for—something. Rescue, maybe, she thought.  
  
"Right now? I'm on my way to Metropolis to drop stuff off for my Dad. Why?" Whitney winced at the response, whatever it was, and raised his voice in accordance. "You were busy! Anyway, I didn't realize your phone was in my truck until a half hour out of Smallville!" Chloe snorted at the lie, and he made a face at her.  
  
"I can't believe you're— Lana, it's not like that!" The decibel level of his voice went up a few more notches. Finally, he sighed, exasperated, and visibly forced himself to calm down. "This is ridiculous. I'm driving right now. I can't talk. I'll give you your phone tomorr—"  
  
Another interruption, and he seemed to deflate. "Sure, Lana. Whatever. We'll talk tomorrow. I'm hanging up now," he added meaningfully, but still he waited a few seconds before saying, "Goodbye." And purposefully pressed END.  
  
"Wow. What was her malfunction?" Chloe asked. "Or should I not even ask?"  
  
"She's annoyed that I took off with her phone," he answered, not meeting her eyes. And that I took off with Chloe Sullivan in the passenger seat, he added silently, but made no show of that tidbit.  
  
Chloe grinned. "Well, you know, all those important phone calls she's got to make, I'm sure…"  
  
"Do you mind?"  
  
"Sorry," she said. She was painfully aware that she probably looked less than contrite, though.  
  
"Lately all she does is get pissed at me," he muttered under his breath, then added, a little louder, more sharply: "Of course, Kent's always there to pick up the slack and make her feel better." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and quickly tacked on a "Sorry" at her deflated expression.  
  
"It's reality, isn't it?" she shrugged, sounding far more chipper than she felt. "The more I hear and see things like that, the better, I think. Cause… I think I'm the kind of person who… who only learns things the hard way. You know?" She gave a short, mirthless laugh, bashful at the admission, and was surprised to see his face break out into a tentative smile to match.  
  
"Heh. Me, too." His features suddenly grew dark, and his eyes narrowed. "You know what he gave Lana for her birthday this year?"  
  
"No," Chloe said glumly. "Although he did have the bad taste to ask me to help pick out clothes for her party."  
  
"Jesus, he's such a jerk," Whitney's voice was laced with incredulity.  
  
"He didn't—I mean, he doesn't really know—"  
  
"No way you're gonna write that one off," He shook his head. "You can't tell me he doesn't know you have a thing for him. He's not stupid. Well… not *that* stupid, anyway."  
  
"I like to think I hide it well."  
  
Whitney bit his lip.  
  
"Shut up. I so do."  
  
"I didn't say anything," Whitney said, all innocence.  
  
Chloe regarded him with a hard look, then softened. "So… what did he get her?"  
  
"Oh. Jeez." Whitney shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "So I spend like three *weeks* looking for a first-edition copy of her favorite book, right?"  
  
"Right… heard about that one."  
  
"After looking in maybe a hundred different bookstores and antique shops and crap like that, over four counties, I finally find it in this used book store way the fuck out past Metropolis, this hole in the wall." His acrimony was mounting visibly with every word. "Like a five hour drive outta Smallville. It cost me a fortune!"  
  
"Very nice of you," Chloe conceded neutrally.  
  
"Thanks," he grumbled. "Not that I'm complaining, cause really, she loved it. Really loved it. But Kent—Kent had to top that, of course. He got Luthor to rent him some movie projector, and recreated a freaking drive through movie theatre against his damn barn for her, all because it reminded Lana of her last birthday with her parents."  
  
Chloe was floored. "Are you kidding me?"  
  
"Can you believe that shit? My book's probably sitting under a pile of dirty socks under her bed."  
  
"Wow."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Nothing," Chloe shook her head, her eyebrows furrowed together in embarrassment. "It's just that he got me a… a gift certificate to Footlocker. For *my* birthday last year."  
  
"Oh, real suave, Kent."  
  
"I haven't used it yet. You want it?"  
  
"Sure." And he gave a sly smile at the thought.  
  
Chloe suddenly grinned conspiratorially. "So, uh… Lex got him the projector, huh?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
They exchanged knowing glances, and burst into snickers in unison.  
  
"Gosh, Lex is such a romantic!" Chloe cooed, batting her eyelashes, and Whitney play-grimaced.  
  
"Anything for Clarkie, I'm sure," he crowed. Then he smirked. "Tell you what-- I'll get you, like, your own synchronized swimming show or a lawn full of ice sculptures or something for your next birthday. Just to piss Clark off."  
  
"Oh, perfect," Chloe snapped, sitting up indignantly. "You know, just the other day I was saying to myself, what my life is really missing is for me to be right in the middle of a pissing contest between Whitney and Clark. Over Lana. That would totally make my freaking year."  
  
Whitney cleared his throat, looking more than a little guilty. "I didn't mean it like that."  
  
Chloe clicked her tongue. "Boys are clueless nerds."  
  
"Yeah? At least we're predictable," he shot back evenly. "Girls are crazy."  
  
Her mouth dropped. "Crazy? CRAZY?" She raised both eyebrows at him in chastisement. "Wait, you're judging *my* sanity?" The implications hung entirely too heavy between them just then, and he only glowered mutely at the road ahead, throwing her only the briefest of glares.  
  
Chloe stayed silently contemplating for a few seconds, then seemed to get a second wind. "And you know what, as much as you complain about Clark, Lana is still with you. After everything he's done for her, and everything you've done to him. So you can't even complain because you're in the lead here, in case you haven't noticed."  
  
Whitney's eyes widened, still on the empty stretch of road ahead, as Lana's words last week came to him, unbidden.  
  
*I feel like I'm trapped in this relationship out of guilt.*  
  
He shuddered and drew a shaky breath. "You know what? It doesn't feel like I'm winning," he confessed quietly.  
  
"Then why?" she asked him, leaning forward over her now-closed laptop. "I'm sorry if it's not my business, but why do you even stick around if you know it's a losing battle? You could have any girl in school." She blushed, and hurried to add awkwardly, "You know. Almost. Why let yourself be humiliated like that? Tell me to butt out if you want, it's just—"  
  
"No, it's OK," he said, looking defeated. "It's because I—" Whitney sighed tensely, a slow blush creeping high onto his cheeks—something she'd never seen before. It made him look years younger, and he looked terribly unhappy with himself. Chloe nodded knowingly.  
  
"Because you *love* her," she said, unable to completely eradicate the sarcasm from her voice. He neither agreed nor disagreed; just rolled his eyes and looked even more uncomfortable.  
  
"Well, I guess that's sort of sweet," she said, wholly underwhelmed. "Hopeless, but sweet." She glanced out the window. The streets were getting busier and more and more houses and buildings were lining them now. Soon she'd see the familiar cityscape of Metropolis looming before them; the knowledge relaxed her inexplicably.  
  
"Like you're any better," he retorted awkwardly, and after far too long.  
  
Nonetheless, her lips twisted in acknowledgement. "Well, I guess one good thing's come out of this," she sighed. "Or semi-good, at least. I mean, I'm cool with the fact that I don't think you're a useless, brainless jock anymore."  
  
Whitney nodded pragmatically. "Yeah, I guess that's cool. Now I know you're not that annoying. Mostly."  
  
"Wow, and he's a sweettalker too," she drawled, squinting at him. "Jeez, shut up, will you? I'm trying to say something here."  
  
"Uh. OK."  
  
"OK… it's like… I dunno, I feel like we're—" she searched for the right turn of phrase, and finally decided upon, "Kindred spirits in second- rateness. Yeah." She gave him an almost affectionate smile.  
  
He blinked. "Thanks. Uh. I think."  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
"I… *think*." He gave her a suspicious look, then his features relaxed. "Y'know, you could go out with a lot of guys and quit pining for Kent too."  
  
"Right," she drawled, barely amused. "I'm beating the guys off me with a stick."  
  
"You could be. If you wanted. A lotta guys on the team had kind of a thing for you."  
  
"You've officially lost what little mind you had, Fordman. Ever get checked out for head injuries? I hear they can induce psychosis."  
  
"Come on, it's true," he nodded, wiggling his eyebrows at her. "Probably cause you rag on us so much. You should have heard how rowdy they got when they found out I'd started working on the paper. Some of them think you'd be a real challenge."  
  
"I can't tell you how flattered I am," she told him sarcastically. "Really. That just totally made my whole night. You just can't possibly know. And you know what, right after I get a lobotomy, I'll be sure to give them all my number."  
  
"It's OK, it's already on the locker room wall," he deadpanned, and burst into laughter at the expression on her face. "I'm kidding!" he protested, dodging a flurry of objects being flung from the passenger side.  
  
"Oh. You were kidding?" she asked, trying desperately to not sound disappointed. "So… they don't think I'm a challenge…or… anything like that. I mean."  
  
"Yeah, no, I meant about your phone number."  
  
"Mmkay... Totally confused here, gotta admit."  
  
"Never mind!" He blew air between his teeth. "Jeez, you're a pain in the*ass* sometimes." But it was said entirely without rancor, and she smiled.  
  
"I aim to please."  
  
He made a turn, and suddenly the ecru mammoth of Metropolis General's exterior loomed before them without any warning. Whitney's features had instantly switched from amusement to a terribly guarded expression, and his gazed darted about the entire building.  
  
"Wow, we're here already," she mused.  
  
"I was doing eighty five on the highway," he admitted absently.  
  
"Yeah, by the way, are you aware that you drive like a friggin' maniac?"  
  
"Hey, I drive fast, but I drive safe."  
  
"Famous last words."  
  
"You're here in one piece, aren't you?"  
  
"But for the grace of God."  
  
He swiped the ticket that the parking entrance machine had spat out at him, and he shoved it in Chloe's direction. "Pain in my *ass*," he muttered again.  
  
She smiled smugly as she tucked the ticket into her bag.  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
In the end, she had met Mr. Fordman for all of three seconds, with her hanging awkwardly in the doorway to his private hospital room as the man gave her a hard suspicious stare before accusatorily croaking out to Whitney, "Where's Lana?"  
  
Whitney had taken that as his cue to hurriedly rifle through his knapsack and dig out a decrepit looking notebook, thrusting it at Chloe while ushering her out into the hallway.  
  
"It's my article for this week's paper," he explained in a hushed voice. "Maybe you can go over it while I wrap things up with my Dad. I dunno." She had nodded, silent and smart enough to keep the concern out of her expression.  
  
It had been hard to concentrate on Whitney's article, though. She found her attention continually zoning back onto the fugue being formed by the two very different male voices on the other side of the door. The words were muffled, but the tones consisted of one man's gravelly, slow diction, in varying degrees of imposing staccato, and another, younger man's light baritone, uncharacteristically never rising above a patient, measured volume.  
  
So the older Fordman turned out to be someone who had finally managed to cow Whitney Fordman, surly arrogance and all. Chloe knew she could have been gloating, but instead she could only shift uncomfortably in the stiff hospital chair and try her mightiest to focus on something other than the tension in the conversation she couldn't quite make out. Her uncanny hearing detected notes of protest and growing frustration in Whitney's voice, and she instantly realized he would not be coming out of there whistling a happy tune at all.  
  
She finally was able to train her attention on the task at hand, and settled down to read Whitney's latest article. What she read made her eyes grow wide. He had ever so cavalierly disregarded the assignment she'd requested and instead decided to write on the topic of his choice. Not totally against the rules, granted, but definitely bucking tradition. Instead of covering junior varsity wrestling tryouts, Whitney had written a rallying account of how he'd learned to appreciate the value of supporting women's sports through his last few assignments on the Torch. He had, for good measure, tacked on a carefully constructed argument at the end about why it was the moral obligation of every Smallville High sports fan to do so. He criticized those who would cry and "completely freak out" (*OK, that'll have to go*, Chloe thought, chewing on her poised red pen) over men's football and then jeer hypocritically at the thought of attending a game of the equally superlative girls' basketball team.  
  
It was quite an effective diatribe. Of course, the students were used to seeing Chloe rant on a weekly basis about just such topics… but coming from Whitney, it would carry a completely different impact.  
  
"Well, how do you like that," Chloe murmured, duly impressed. "Whitney Fordman, champion feminist. Will wonders never cease."  
  
A few more minutes of red scribbling and corrections passed before the sudden click of the door made her start. She hurriedly stood and began collecting her belongings as Whitney made his way into the hallway, knapsack in hand, his expression one of utter whitewash.  
  
"Went that good, huh?" she asked gently. He just shook his head silently and stared at the ceiling in frustration.  
  
"Wh… what happened?" Her voice was quiet, unsure. He just continued to shake his head slowly, eyebrows furrowing, his gaze fixed on the now-locked door as though it could give him any kind of answer.  
  
"Same crap as always," he said after a moment. "The books are a mess, my mother is useless and so am I, I'm lazy and I don't give a shit about anything important…" his voice broke off and he let out a tired breath. "Actually… now that I've lost my chance at that scholarship, my father thinks I should just drop out of school." He didn't meet her eyes as he started down the hall without notice.  
  
Chloe's mouth dropped in brief shock, and she had to scramble to catch up. "Whitney—don't do that, OK? Please don't do that."  
  
"Well," he started, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "It's not like I have to worry about my future, right? I mean if I didn't go back tomorrow, I'd have a job for the rest of my life."  
  
"You mean the job you currently loathe with a fire of a thousand exploding suns?"  
  
"That's the one," he nodded grimly, still not looking at her.  
  
"Well, I think that would be criminal," she told him, fully indignant, and with enough force to compel him to finally give her a sidelong glance.  
  
"Criminal, huh?" he snorted. "I'm not exactly a scholar anyway…"  
  
"Granted, you will never win a Pulitzer," she conceded, "But you're not exactly a Neanderthal, either." She stopped him with her hand on his arm, turning him to face her. "Your writing has been really sharp, Whitney. This last one—whoa. It sincerely blew me away. You're not a dumb guy, y'know. You could get into college on an academic scholarship."  
  
He let out a dry laugh. "I'm a solid B student," he confessed. "With football, I never really had time to really throw myself into schoolwork."  
  
"You'd still be able to get in, and you could try out for the team when the time comes."  
  
"How would I even begin to pay for that? I don't have a penny saved up for college. I was counting on it all being paid for when the time came. So much for not being an idiot, huh?" He sounded utterly disgusted with himself, and she frowned, dismayed.  
  
"You can go to a state college, then," Chloe insisted, her voice nearly pleading. "They have payment plans and they're cheap, and you could still play football and maybe transfer and—there's a whole hell of a lot you can do. You're just—just being a total fatalist."  
  
"I'm being a fatalist?"  
  
"Yes! And it's ridiculously melodramatic, because hello? You're only seventeen."  
  
"Eighteen next month."  
  
"Big deal!" And she smacked him with his own notebook, making him cock an eyebrow at her. "I can't even believe you're falling for your Dad's crap like that. I can't believe you want to get out of Smallville that badly and then you give up at the first setback and you're going to—to just piss it all away by dropping out of school! Oooh, I could just smack you!"  
  
"You already did," he pointed out glumly.  
  
"Whatever!" She blew air between her teeth and stared at him. "The point is that if you drop out of high school with only four months left to graduate and resign yourself to something you completely don't want, then yeah, you are a total moron. I mean, you'd be, like, King of the Morons. But you'd only be doing it because you want to, because if a stupid freshmen like me can see a dozen different ways for you to get exactly what you really want, then it can't be all that impossible. Of course, if you're just looking for a way to secure yourself a lifetime of feeling sorry for yourself—"  
  
"I'm not feeling—" but he paused, and chewed on his bottom lip. "OK, you know what? It's really hard to think straight and think all positive when someone is telling you that you will never get to where you want to be, all right?"  
  
She smacked him again.  
  
"Again with the notebook," he grumbled. "What was that for?"  
  
"My dad says that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  
  
Whitney stared at her flatly. "What the hell does that mean?"  
  
"It means that if your dad is only capable of shooting down everything you hope for, then, duh, logic dictates that you don't turn to him for support about things like this." She sighed, collecting herself, and began again: "You turn to your friends. You turn to Lana. Don't roll your eyes; if you can't turn to her, then what the hell do you have her there for?"  
  
The question was innocuously asked, but it gave him sharp pause just then, because it suddenly hit him that he no longer had an answer to that question—not one he could be sure of.  
  
Maybe she saw this in his face, because she quickly changed course: "You know, I thought we were supposed to cheer ourselves up on this trip. And I dunno about you, but so far, this has been kind of a downer."  
  
"I'm sorry. It's just--"  
  
"I swear to God, Fordman, if you ever let me finish anything I say, I will die a happy woman."  
  
"Yeah, well, if I ever let you finish, I'd probably die waiting for you to finish." Amusement was creeping back into his eyes, and she visibly relaxed at that.  
  
"Uh, yeah, whatever *that* means," she scoffed playfully. "Anyway, I propose that as long as we're here in the great city of Metropolis, we should pay a visit to what's indisputably the Happiest Place On Earth."  
  
His mouth twisted into a teasing grin. "Tijuana, Mexico?"  
  
She groaned audibly and threw up her hands in disgust. "I think I honestly might hate you," she cried as she dragged him by a sleeve toward the exit elevator.  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
::: sings :::: This is the fic that never ends :::sings:::. It just goes on and on my friends!! I promise only 4 more chapters. Many thanks to my eagle-eyed betas, Tresca and wook, to whom any shred of coherence in this chapter is due. Also, I'd like to thank Tresca for helping me make Whitney sound a LOT less like Robin Williams. Chapter 10 will be up by 4/5/2002. 


	10. Elliptic

AUTHOR's BEGINNING NOTE: No, there's no precedence whatsoever for Chloe's sudden hobby-come-plot-contrivance. But why the heck not? And yeah, I caved in and redeemed Clark a little tiny bit. This chapter has a significantly revised middle section upon the extremely helpful suggestions of Tresca, Raincitygirl and queenofalostart. [emotional-drunk-voice]I lurve you guys!![/emotional-drunk-voice]  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
X.  
  
"Clark? What are you doing here?" Pete eyed his best friend sitting patiently, hands folded, in Chloe's usual chair in the Torch office.  
  
Clark stared at his lap, abashed. "I'm uh… I'm waiting for Chloe."  
  
"Everything all right?" Pete raised his eyebrow quizzically.  
  
"I… God, I think I totally messed up. With Chloe."  
  
"Ahhh," Pete nodded, trying very hard indeed to mask how much he was dreading where this was potentially going. "Is that your tail between your legs, or are you just happy to see me?"  
  
Clark glared at Pete in mock disgust. "You have issues."  
  
Pete shrugged and laughed. "Man, oh, man. Clark Kent screwed up! This, I gotta hear about."  
  
Clark sighed, pointedly ignoring his friend's unabashed snark. "Well, Chloe uncovered some pretty nasty facts about the charity that was behind Lana's food drive. And—"  
  
"She tried to get the scoop, and you went ballistic on her for Lana's sake?"  
  
Clark stopped mid-sentence and stared at Pete with wide-eyed shame-face. "Oh. She told you already, huh?"  
  
"Nope. Haven't seen Chloe all afternoon. Just that you two are pretty predictable. No offense."  
  
Clark shook his head, miserably contrite. "Man, you have no idea. I yelled at her. I *yelled* at her, Pete. In front of Lana and Whitney. And I called the Torch a stupid paper."  
  
"Ouch," Pete said, and he mimed a physical wound to the heart. "That, my friend, was beyond harsh."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Chloe's sun rises and sets on this paper."  
  
"Dude, I know."  
  
"You should now be well into damage-control planning, I imagine."  
  
"You know it. I was hoping to catch her here. I figured it was only a matter of time before she headed back here—"  
  
"Actually, Clark, I don't think she'll be back today. She took off with Whitney, and I think he was on his way to Metropolis."  
  
As Pete had fully expected, that news changed Clark's posture and expression quite radically. "Metropolis? She went to Metropolis with Whitney Fordman." He repeated it as though he could literally not believe it.  
  
"That's what her dad said when I called her house—that she went to Metropolis with a friend." Pete shrugged nonchalantly. "I used my amazing powers of deductive reasoning to arrive at the conclusion that the 'friend' in question was Whitney Fordman."  
  
"With *Whitney Fordman*?" Clark went on, ignoring him. "What *is* it with that guy? I can't get rid of him! How come every time I turn around, he's there?"  
  
"Well, Clark, I hate to state the obvious, but Whitney is pretty irrelevant to this situation with Chloe."  
  
The mounting anger easily dissipated under the weight of Pete's common sense, and Clark nodded again, calmer. "Yeah, you're right. It's just that ever since he and Chloe started getting chummy, it's like there's been this wedge between us."  
  
"Yeah? Who put that wedge there? Her? Or…" Pete let that thought dangle meaningfully. He had absolutely no desire to get in the middle of this drama, but he certainly wasn't going to let Clark pass the buck so idly.  
  
Clark considered his friend's word, and his expression shifted towards the conspiratorial. "It drives me crazy that she's so cool with him."  
  
"Why? Are you jealous?"  
  
"Of course I am!" Clark exclaimed, pacing now. "She's *my* friend, and he's a colossal jerk, and what the hell is she doing hanging around him?"  
  
Pete pressed his lips together into a grim line as he considered his next words. "Yeah, Clark. Now you know how I feel about you and Lex."  
  
"It's so not the same thing."  
  
"I truly fail to see the difference."  
  
"Lex would never treat anyone the way Whitney treats people!"  
  
"The way he treats *you*, you mean," Pete corrected him. "Look… Whitney's not my favorite person either, but I think you're not giving Chloe enough credit here. If she's getting to know him, maybe Lana's right, and there really is a lot there we don't see. And Whitney's not exactly the life of the party, but he's got a reputation for being a pretty good friend."  
  
"Keep in mind, Chloe is the world's worst judge of character when it comes to guys," Clark stated with grave authority.  
  
It took a few seconds for Pete to stop gaping at Clark in disbelief. Then he snorted, and finally he burst into full-on laughter.  
  
"Did I… miss something?" Clark asked tonelessly.  
  
"Apparently you missed a—" Pete snickered uncontrollably-- "A *whole* lotta something!"  
  
Clark stared at Pete as his friend continued with his fit of giggles.  
  
"Man, you are such a geek!" Pete exclaimed, gasping for air. "Sometimes I think it's gotta be an act but--- bwahahahaha!"  
  
Clark raised an eyebrow, Spock-like, at him in response.  
  
"You really have no idea, do you?"  
  
"Have no idea of what?"  
  
"Clark!" Pete clapped his friend on the back in mock sympathy, an occasional stray chuckle still escaping him. "Clark, Clark, Clark."  
  
"Pete—"  
  
"Man, Chloe *likes* you."  
  
"Er….."  
  
"As in, more than a friend. As in, she wants to be your significant other. As in, she wants to be your number one." He sang the last part, Stylistics- style, and laughed at his own joke.  
  
"Are you high? She does not." But his voice was doubtful, and he looked markedly more uncomfortable than he had just moments earlier.  
  
"She does too, trust your boy Pete on this one."  
  
"Has she actually told you this?"  
  
"Oh, no. I mean, I've asked her about it, but I actually think her constant and overly vehement denials kind of add weight to what I'm saying here."  
  
"Come on."  
  
"Clark, I'm telling you, she likes you. Might even be in love with you. Don't tell me you had no idea."  
  
Clark's expression confessed it all.  
  
"Oh, man!" Pete said, renewing his laughter. "I can't believe it. This whole time I thought you were just playing dumb to preserve the friendship—but you weren't playing!"  
  
"Gee, thanks," Clark said miserably. "I am so, so glad you and I got a chance to catch up, Pete. I now feel a hundred times stupider than I did before."  
  
"Maybe she's hanging out with Whitney to make you jealous and finally notice her."  
  
"But I…..don't really…."  
  
"I know. You don't like her like that. You only have eyes for Lana."  
  
"Well, yeah."  
  
Pete rolled his eyes and sank into Chloe's now-unoccupied chair. "Man, you really are an ingrate. Chloe is… Chloe's awesome."  
  
"I can't help what I feel."  
  
"Nobody can," Pete said, and his cryptic tone made Clark look harder at him. "Just do me a favor, OK? Be gentle with Chloe's feelings. Real gentle. OK? Cause she may sometimes act like a bad ass, but she's not nearly as tough as she likes to think she is."  
  
Clark sighed and nodded. "Who ever is?"  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
"Relax, Fordman, nothing in there will bite you," Chloe called behind her, her gaze sweeping up the exterior of the Metropolis Art Museum. She deftly skipped up the marble front steps as Whitney slinked cautiously behind her.  
  
"This is an art museum, right?"  
  
"Mmmhmm," she said, and waited for him to catch up. She laughed at his expression of sheer dread.  
  
"I'm insane." Whitney nodded with feigned grim resignation. "I must be insane."  
  
"Oh, come on, you've never been?"  
  
"Yeah, a couple of months ago when Luthor was showing off all his Greek art," he answered, his dismay becoming more and more marked. "Gotta be honest… Places like these make me antsy."  
  
"Antsy? How could you be antsy in an art museum?" There was a disbelieving twinkle in her eye. "It's so quiet and peaceful in there. And you're just surrounded by all these objects of beauty from all across the ages, and—" she halted at his amused expression. "What? You think I'm a big flake, don't you?"  
  
"You really want an answer to that?"  
  
"God, you're so ornery. You're like a grumpy old man… except you're not old." Chloe grabbed him by the elbow and literally dragged him the few remaining steps. "I promise this is a great place to unwind. My mom and I come here all the time when I visit her. Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong before?" She blinked. "Don't answer that."  
  
"Good call."  
  
"Just *trust* me," she insisted. "You're about to get the Sullivan Crash Course on Art History."  
  
"Great, it's like a field trip, only I actually don't have to be here."  
  
"Are you coming, or are you just going to stand outside complaining all day?"  
  
"Do I really have a choice?"  
  
"Of course not."  
  
They hit the High Renaissance painting room first. Much to Chloe's utter disgust, Whitney was entirely too impressed with the copious amounts of paintings of "naked chicks."  
  
"Congratulations, Fordman, you've managed to make the entire Italian Renaissance totally sleazy," she rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "The point of creating these was not to provide the next few centuries of undersexed teenage boys with soft core porn."  
  
"Undersexed?" he cried indignantly, making several fellow museum patrons stare in disapproval. He lowered his voice slightly and added, "What *ever*."  
  
"Yeah 'whatever' is right, Fordman. Totally missing the point."  
  
"There's a point to art? Well, whaddaya know."  
  
"Just because you're from Smallville really and truly doesn't mean you have to be totally acultural, you know!" she exclaimed, then faltered, searching for words. "OK. The point was like… well, this French author once said…" Chloe cleared her throat as she began reciting from memory, suddenly swept up in her own words: "Art is not a study of positive reality; it is the seeking for ideal truth."  
  
Whitney blinked, then nodded agreeably, his gaze fixed on a pair of naked seventeenth century wood nymphs. "Deep." But he caught her annoyance, and added, more sincerely, "No, really, I mean it. That's deep."  
  
She gave him a pointedly doubtful look.  
  
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "It's saying that lots of people think art's only any good if it looks realistic, but it's really trying to be better than reality." He gave her a sidelong, triumphant glance.  
  
Chloe, for her part, was satisfied with his take on it. "Mmm. Maybe not better. Bigger. I dunno. Just… more." Chloe studied the painting in front of her contentedly. "People look at paintings like these and they think it's like a photograph. You know? A moment in time that got captured. But I sometimes feel like it's more like a conversation with the artist." She blushed a little at her own romanticism. "I guess that sounds pretty corny."  
  
"Nah. I just didn't know you were into this stuff."  
  
"Well, it's not like people are lining up to listen to me go on and on about this back in Smallville."  
  
Whitney gave her a small, pleased smile. "Cool. What else is there here?"  
  
Chloe relaxed and led Whitney through a few more galleries populated with Frida Kahlos, ancient Egyptian treasures, and obscure American impressionists. She knew enough about his parakeet-level attention span to not dawdle too long in any one section, and soon the peace and quiet majesty of the museum was considerably diffusing the tension of a painfully long day as they ambled from hall to hall.  
  
It didn't take them long to wander over to the museum's current special exhibit. They had only spent a few moments quizzically analyzing the fragile yellowing paper behind the large glass cases, covered with the clumsy, convoluted black scribbles and sketches, before Whitney wrinkled his nose and frowned, excusing himself to the bathroom. Chloe shook her head after him and sighed. The boy really *was* a poster child for ADD—these pieces may not appear all that interesting, but they got a whole section of the museum in their honor, so Chloe felt sure they must be important. She fingered the glass case, peering closer, and wondered outloud, "I wonder what this is supposed to be?"  
  
"They're mistakes." The melodically familiar voice behind her made her start. Chloe whirled around and smiled tentatively in recognition.  
  
"Lex!"  
  
Lex Luthor greeted Chloe with a warming smile. "Chloe, good to see you."  
  
"Yeah, fancy meeting you here."  
  
Lex's smile broadened. "I'm actually about to head home. I was in town for a business dinner and decided to swing by here and drop off a check I've been meaning to write for a while now."  
  
"Oh, wow," Chloe raised her eyebrows, impressed. "I didn't know you were a patron of the museum."  
  
Against her better wisdom, Lex Luthor had never really managed to intimidate her the way he seemed to intimidate most everyone else in Smallville. Maybe it was the way his entire demeanor changed, lit up and relaxed, in Clark's presence that made him seem so much more accessible to her. She knew just how he felt. She also suspected that Lex knew just how *she* felt… only she doubted Lex would ever consider her serious competition. There were a few times, though, when she had caught Lex staring at Clark surreptitiously that made her wonder if the intensity of her own feelings for Clark would even begin to compare to Lex's. It gave her pause, and frightened her a bit, so she preferred to stick to Lex's chosen relationship for them: quietly friendly competition.  
  
"I've been a patron of this place for a few years. I had no idea you were an art aficionado, Miss Sullivan," Lex said breezily.  
  
Chloe gave a self-effacing grin and shrugged. "I just like to come here and look at everything sometimes. It puts a lot into perspective."  
  
Lex murmured to Chloe neutrally, "So what brings you here?"  
  
Chloe searched for an apt explanation. She finally settled on, "Just hanging out. We were going to head home in a few minutes too, actually."  
  
Lex's posture immediately gave a subtle change at the word "we". He studied Chloe closely. "Who's we?" he inquired casually.  
  
She knew the name he was hoping to hear, and with awful realization, she also knew the reaction she'd get when she gave him the real answer. It was clear to everyone that Lex loathed Whitney, probably because if anyone was volumes more intensely protective of Clark than she was, it was Lex… and he knew better than anyone just how badly Whitney had treated Clark at the beginning of the semester.  
  
"Um… a friend from school," she answered as naturally as she could.  
  
Whitney picked that as the perfect moment to wander back into the exhibit hall, of course. His face hardened into a neutral expression the instant he saw Lex, and Lex stiffened considerably, giving Chloe a reappraising glance.  
  
"Uh, hi, Mr. Luthor," Whitney said carefully. Lex gifted him with a cold smile, and scrutinized him just long enough to make Whitney begin to squirm.  
  
"Wow," Lex drawled, examining Chloe's expression with great care. "I must admit I would have never pegged the two of you as friends. You seem to have so… little in common." The last sentence was uttered with restrained derision in Whitney's direction, but it was clear exactly what Lex meant. Whitney's cheeks flushed at the insinuation.  
  
"Stranger things have happened," Chloe said brightly, hoping to scatter some of the thickly building tension—and hoping for once, Whitney was able to keep his mouth shut. For now, Whitney was standing with his hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets.  
  
Seemingly satisfied, Lex waved to the glass case around which they'd been previously huddled. "What do you think of these? They're on loan from my father's private collection; they're da Vinci's mistakes."  
  
"If they're mistakes, what are they doing in a museum?" Whitney blurted out, and was immediately made sorry by the steely, withering look Lex gave him.  
  
The older man pointedly chose to respond only to Chloe. "Leonardo spent a lot of time in his studio just sketching whatever came to mind. He experimented a lot, and it didn't always turn out exactly the way he'd hoped. He also wasn't that great about finishing everything he started. Some of them were never meant to be seen—they were like rough drafts. Lucky for us, he was a pack rat and never threw anything away."  
  
Chloe was fascinated. "So these are just a bunch of da Vinci's screw ups that he didn't even want?"  
  
Lex nodded at her. "Kind of. Now, of course, they're very valuable. They reveal a genius in progress." At this, he grinned at her slyly, and she smiled back. "The contents of this case here, for example, are worth more than many of his individual paintings."  
  
Chloe seemed pleased, and said cheerfully, "And the moral of the story is, just because something looks all screwed up doesn't mean it's not worth a lot anyway."  
  
Lex regarded her benevolently. "It's too bad Clark never mentioned your affinity for art, Ms. Sullivan. I would have made sure to tell him to invite you to the Greek exhibit's opening last month."  
  
Her smile faltered at the mention of Clark's name, and Lex responded with a smile that did not touch his eyes.  
  
Whitney, for his part, shuffled his feet awkwardly and exaggeratedly checked his watch. "Oh, man. Will ya look at the time! We better start heading back soon if we're going to make your dad's curfew, Chloe."  
  
"Ah," Lex said, nodding in Whitney's direction… but still not bothering to look at him. "A pleasure as always, Miss Sullivan. I'm sure we'll run into each other again."  
  
"I'm sure," she agreed good-naturedly. She caught Whitney making a fast exit out of the corner of her eye, and, hurrying to follow him, she called over her shoulder to Lex: "It was good to see you again!"  
  
The last thing she saw as she rounded the corridor's corner was Lex waving back vaguely, his expression unreadable.  
  
"What's your rush, Fordman?" Chloe panted as she finally caught up with him outside, slightly out of breath.  
  
Whitney smiled tightly. "That guy *hates my ass*."  
  
"Ha! If anything, that's the part of you he hates *least*."  
  
Whitney snorted. "That wasn't exactly pleasant for me."  
  
"Well, you know he's a little… uh, well… attached to Clark," Chloe said, and paused, momentarily taken aback by the fact that Whitney had opened the truck's door for her. She was oddly touched by the gesture as she climbed in the passenger side.  
  
"Attached. Is that your nice way of saying 'freakishly obsessed'?"  
  
"Yep! But seriously, Lex is pretty cool once you get to know him."  
  
"Think I'll pass, thanks."  
  
Chloe sighed happily as they took off. "Sooo… what did you think of the museum? Wasn't that place cool? Do I know how to pick 'em, or what?"  
  
Whitney did a quick self-check, and nodded slowly. "I've gotta admit. I feel a lot better. Tension migraine is gone, for one thing."  
  
"Me too," Chloe admitted.  
  
"Thanks, Sullivan," he said. "Turned out to be a good thing that you came along."  
  
"I live to serve," she replied, but sounded considerably more tired than usual. She sighed, and said quietly, "I feel better too, I think. I'm actually not even that mad anymore that Clark said the Torch was stupid."  
  
"*Clark* is stupid," Whitney muttered.  
  
Chloe clicked her tongue at him. "Yeah, well, you're biased."  
  
"So are you."  
  
Chloe gave a small conceding smile, watching the darkened buildings one by one as they passed them. "Touche."  
  
  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
AUTHORS NOTES:  
  
OK, no snogging in this chapter like I previously promised. I swear on Lana's parents' graves that it'll be in the next chapter. These guys just sorta write themselves and they didn't feel like snogging in this one. Sorry!  
  
And once again I must sing the highest praises of wookie1013, UberBeta Extraordinaire!!!! I swear I wish I had a wookie1013 inside my head all the time, so that I could sound smart and coherent all the damn time. . 


	11. Punctuation

XI.  
  
  
  
Their conversation on the way home was far more subdued than it had been in the opposite direction. Whitney stopped at a drive through just outside of Metropolis, and they ate in quiet pensiveness for a good long while. Chloe was the one to finally break the silence.  
  
"OK, and don't take this personally, seeing as you're in love with her and everything," she started. "But you know what really bugs me? I mean, about the way he is with her."  
  
"What?" He knew immediately the "her" and "him" she was referring to, naturally.  
  
"That she doesn't have to do anything to earn all that devotion." She shook her head, finally airing all the bitter resentment. "All she has to do is show up and look pretty, and he follows her around like some mindless dog. I, on the other hand, have been his best friend for nearly two years. I've nearly gotten killed for it, actually! I mean, not like I'm keeping count, but several times! I am always there for him every time he's got a problem. But does any of it matter at all? Nooo."  
  
"How do you think I feel?" Whitney agreed darkly. "I've spent a year and a half treating her like a princess, putting her needs first, going out of my way for her whenever possible. Suddenly I show up this semester and she's constantly gushing to me about how heroic Clark Fucking Kent is. Talking about 'oooh, sometimes people can surprise you.' And I'm thinking, did she expect me to be impressed?"  
  
Chloe snorted and waved away that notion dismissively. "I'm sorry, Fordman, but she must know he's, like, totally ga-ga over her."  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, I think she knows." It was the first time he'd made such an admission to anyone—he'd half-admitted it to himself on several occasions, but had always subsequently just shoved it deeper into his subconscious, engaging in deliberate denial.  
  
"So your girlfriend is basically a heartless tease."  
  
Whitney thought about the implications of Chloe's quasi-question for a few minutes, long past the time than Chloe could have expected a response. His voice over the quiet hum of the truck's engine made her start. "Fuck it all."  
  
Chloe batted her eyelashes blankly. "I beg your pardon?"  
  
"I said, fuck it all. Cause I'm starting to realize that it's got nothing to do with what you *do*." His tone was quiet, careful, but resigned. "In the end, it doesn't matter what I do or what I feel. If she doesn't feel the same way, then she just doesn't. You can't… you can't force that."  
  
Chloe nodded sagely, letting that sink in. "So then, what do you do? If you care about someone like that, and they don't want you back?"  
  
"Well…. It's like you said. It's crazy to keep going after the same thing and expecting different results." He shook his head slowly. "I don't know. Reassess priorities, I guess."  
  
Chloe sipped thoughtfully on her soda. "I've decided you and Pete are right."  
  
"Me and Pete? Pete Ross? The little guy?"  
  
"The little guy!" Chloe chortled. "Oh, he'd love that. But yeah. He told me I've got to quit wasting my time on a dead end, and he's right." She ended by raising her chin with feigned bravado.  
  
"Yeah, actually, y'know, I think Ross has a thing for you too."  
  
Chloe stared at him, wide-eyed at his remarkable talent for uncanny insight. Her skin crawled at the memory of Pete's unwilling confession—and subsequent transformation-- under the influence of the Nicodemus flower. She cleared her throat awkwardly and began again. "That's so not the point here. The point is that I'm sixteen years old and, you know what, I'm kinda cute!" She ignored his soft laughter, but smiled despite herself, and continued: "If Clark can't appreciate me, there are plenty of guys who will."  
  
"There you go," and he slapped the steering wheel for emphasis. He thought for a moment, and said, "Hell, I've decided you're right, too. I've got to start being a little more pro-active in my life."  
  
She raised an eyebrow. "Pro-active? *I* said you had to be pro-active?"  
  
"Yeah! Uh. I think." But he started to look doubtful again, and she hurried to maintain the momentum of the conversation.  
  
"Um. Right. So exactly what are you going to do that's, uh… pro-active?"  
  
Whitney fell silent. "I don't know," he admitted. "I just like thinking that I will."  
  
She laughed lightly, and he rewarded her with a rare, genuine, full-on smile that made her own falter.  
  
Lucky thing it was so very dark.  
  
"You know what? And don't get offended or anything when I say this."  
  
"Uh oh," Chloe muttered. "People always say that when they're about to say something really, really offensive."  
  
"No, no, listen," Whitney insisted. "I was gonna say that… you know how earlier I said you were not all that annoying?"  
  
"Yeah…" Chloe drawled, becoming incrementally wary.  
  
"I dunno. Now that we've hung out some more, well… you're not annoying at all really. Actually, you're kind of… fun."  
  
"Wow." Chloe chewed her bottom lip absently, then asked, "Is that what passes for a compliment where you come from?"  
  
"Heh. Maybe."  
  
"So you thought I was rotten and intolerable before you got to know me, but now, not so much. I'm sorry, is this the part where I swoon?"  
  
He threw her a meaningful look, and she grunted derisively.  
  
"Come on! Like you're so much better," he teased. "You thought I was practically some grunting cave dude before. Admit it."  
  
She beamed at him beatifically. "What on earth makes you think I've changed my mind?"  
  
Whitney smirked into the darkness as he kept on driving.  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
Chloe had actually dozed off when, with her eyes still closed, she felt the car slowing down and making more frequent turns. She opened her eyes and looked around in a half-daze and instantly recognized her surroundings.  
  
"Hey," she asked, her voice hoarse. "How come we're going to Lana's?"  
  
"I'm just going to drop her phone off," he explained. "I'm not going to see her for most of tomorrow, and she might need it before then. Her house is on the way to yours. Do you mind?" The last question was asked sincerely, and she shook her head. Whitney hadn't lied earlier that afternoon; due to the fact that he did, in fact, drive at a velocity rapidly approaching that of the speed of sound, they'd made it back to Smallville with plenty of time to spare till her curfew.  
  
She stretched and groaned, sore from having fallen asleep upright.  
  
"You OK?" he asked absently. The anxiety from the prospect of having to face Lana was visibly building in his features and posture.  
  
"Fine. Just a little sore."  
  
"Mmm."  
  
He shut off the engine and apprehensively studied Lana's front door, not moving yet. A quick glance around the house revealed Lana's bedroom window—curtains shut—to have the only lit lamp in the house.  
  
"Shit. Is Nell asleep?" Chloe asked.  
  
"Yeah, probably," Whitney nodded. "It's cool. I'll just throw something at her window and she'll come down real quick."  
  
"How very Cyrano de Bergerac," she quipped playfully. "Just don't serenade her. I heard you humming along to the radio on the way over here, and you weren't lying when you said you couldn't sing."  
  
Whitney's expression feigned insult, but the small smile that had resulted disappeared just as easily with another glance at Lana's house. "I guess it's now or never," Whitney said flatly. He glanced at Chloe. "You better get out of the truck too."  
  
"Uh. Why?"  
  
"Because it'll look weird if you don't," he told her, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. And with that, he ducked out of the driver's side and gently closed the door.  
  
She squinted and let his feeble attempt at logic pass without comment, instead asking as she joined him, "You think she's going to still be mad? I don't know if she'll want to see me." She noted with vague irritation that once again she was practically jogging to keep up with what for him was a brisk stroll.  
  
"Nah, Lana never stays mad for long at anything," Whitney said, a note of affection creeping into his voice despite himself.  
  
Chloe forced herself to smile congenially. "Of course not!"  
  
And just as suddenly, Whitney froze, not twenty feet from the front steps, as his jaw dropped open in mute horror.  
  
She followed the direction of his gaze, and just as suddenly felt a wave of coldness wash over her entire being. Peeking out from the shadows of the side of the Potter home, barely visible and seen only by the cruelest of chances, was a dilapidated blue pick up truck.  
  
Chloe instantly recognized it as the one Clark's father drove.  
  
Virtually in unison, they both did a quick, nervous scan of the entire house. Every light was turned off except for the one in Lana's bedroom. So then… but no, it didn't make sense. Clark rarely drove anywhere, having just gotten his license. And he lived within easy walking distance to Lana's house. Why would his truck be parked here so surreptitiously at nearly midnight on a school night?  
  
She let out a short, tense breath, still too stunned to speak, and glanced over to Whitney. His mouth was still slightly agape in disbelief. She was glad for the chance to scrutinize his reaction instead of having to deal with the sharply painful cacophony of her own shock. Whitney simply seemed completely unable to look away from Clark's truck.  
  
*Car wreck phenomenon: check*, she thought to herself, and she fought the urge to laugh hysterically.  
  
Because Clark was in the room with Lana. She knew it in her gut, the knowledge assaulting her almost physically like a terrible cramp. Just as wordlessly, she knew that Whitney knew it, too. It was the only possible explanation. And neither of them were stupid or naïve enough to pretend they didn't know what that really meant.  
  
They had only been standing there dumbfounded for a few seconds, but it appeared to them both to be much longer. Then, just as suddenly…  
  
Lana's bedroom light went out.  
  
"Whitney…" Chloe breathed, and it came out more like an agonized croak.  
  
Whitney shook his head slowly, unable to speak still. Somewhere, in a much more detached part of her brain than the part that was currently in control, she admired the way his features had already resumed their usual stoicism almost completely, save for a couple of still-clenched jaw muscles.  
  
He fingered the faceplate of the cell phone in his hand absently for a moment, then without looking at her, he said in a low, hoarse voice: "We should go."  
  
She nodded mutely, and followed him to his truck without further comment.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This and the next chapter were originally one long chapter, but I decided to break it up into two for easier reading. That means this story will have 14 chapters instead of the original planned 13. 


	12. Proofreading

SPOILERS: "Hug"  
  
  
  
XII.  
  
  
  
Chloe's house was just a short drive away, but she had remained tight- lipped the entire trip as an exercise in self-restraint. It was either that, or sob on Whitney's shoulder—the last thing either of them needed, to be damn sure.  
  
She couldn't think of anything to say to him that didn't sound incredibly adolescent, or shockingly invasive, or both. Still, with every mute second that passed, the ball of anxiety in the pit of her stomach grew more and more leaden.  
  
Finally, she half-whispered, "Are you OK?"  
  
"I'm fine," Whitney answered curtly.  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
"I'm *fine*," he repeated, more forceful this time. Then he softened and added, "I'll be fine. Thanks."  
  
"I'm sorry," she offered lamely, and he clicked his tongue in reprehension.  
  
"What the hell for?"  
  
"Back at the house—"  
  
"Not your fault. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it," he snapped.  
  
Taken aback, she nodded after a moment. He pulled into her street, but came to a halt at the foot. Whitney's nostrils flared furiously as he blurted out, "I would like to know what the hell he's got that I don't, though."  
  
His voice contained such scorn and judgment that she hadn't realized he actually expected an answer until he turned to face her, virtually barking, "Huh? Can you tell me that? What's Kent got that I don't? Because no matter what I do, I can't win, and for *once*, I'd like to know why."  
  
"Uh… I'm guessing that's not a rhetorical question?" she asked, her voice tentative.  
  
"No!"  
  
She swallowed nervously, and thought for a moment. "Well, he's—" Her brow furrowed in thought. She began again. "See, you're—" And she stared off into space intently for a few seconds before turning to study him, her fingers tapping softly on the truck's arm rest.  
  
He bore the scrutiny with tense anticipation.  
  
"You know what, Fordman," she mused. "I don't know. I guess… the only thing I can think of is that he doesn't have your temper."  
  
"That's it?" he cried, his voice rising to near humorous pitch. "I get more pissed off than he does? The guy's practically not human! If he were any more laid back, he'd be furniture."  
  
She shrugged and did a quick internal check. Urge to burst forth with sobs gone. Good. Good.  
  
"I guess he's good looking, if you like that semi-dorky type," Whitney added sullenly. He caught her pointed stare and quickly added, "No offense."  
  
Chloe rolled her eyes. "While I won't deny that Clark is definitely very easy on the eyes, that can't be it. I mean, it's not like you're totally Quasi Modo, anyway."  
  
"I'm not who?"  
  
"Oh, for Pete's sake!" She gave him a leveling look. "I just mean that all the girls at school practically faint whenever you walk by. You're practically the fifth member of N'Sync as far as they're all concerned. Don't even pretend like you don't know." With that, Chloe felt the blush spreading in her cheeks. Had she just told Whitney Fordman she thought he was cute? She could not believe her own audacity.  
  
Whitney seemed considerably appeased by her answer, though. She sighed. "Clark's just a really, really nice guy."  
  
"Yeah. Clark is so goddamn nice he makes me want to dry heave."  
  
Chloe couldn't help herself; she gave a short, hollow laugh at that. At the sound of her laughter, she noted that Whitney seemed to relax just a notch as well. At least he didn't look like he was going to cry anymore either, which was decidedly a good thing, to say the least. Chloe felt sure that, had she been forced to deal with a weepy, sniveling Whitney Fordman this dreadfully overlong evening, the last remaining shreds of her sanity would have happily bid her farewell.  
  
He let out a sullen breath and said, much softer, "Clark's such a nice guy that he's with somebody else's girlfriend as we speak."  
  
Chloe winced. "Good point."  
  
For the moment, Whitney seemed content to breathe steadily and in the process wind down, still gripping the steering wheel and lost in thought. She looked out the window into the quiet neighborhood, and without thinking, she swallowed thickly and joked, "I guess he's a memorable kisser, too."  
  
Whitney gawked at her incredulously with a peculiarly pained expression. "You? You've kissed Kent? When was that?"  
  
Was that the faintest note of jealousy she detected in his voice? Chloe rapidly blinked in succession, determined to dismiss the ridiculous notion from her head. "I… uhh… well, this one time…"  
  
"I can *not* believe it. When were you planning on telling me that?"  
  
She paused uncertainly. "Uh…"  
  
"So, what, are—are you saying I might not be as memorable?"  
  
Chloe silently cursed this petulant boy's uncanny ability to take her completely off guard time and again. She hadn't stammered this much since she'd been forced to do a school play in the fourth grade. "No, I just meant—"  
  
"Because I've gotten no complaints so far, I'll tell you that much."  
  
She hid a small grin at the strange turn in conversation. "I'm sure Lana thinks you're fine."  
  
Chloe was surprised, then, when he completely took this the wrong way. "What's that supposed to mean?" he shot back defensively.  
  
"Nothing!" She was being truthful, so why did he seem to think she was being coy?  
  
"What, you-- you think just because I'm into sports, I'm going to be like—freaking clumsy and bad at stuff like that?"  
  
"I didn't say that!" She noted with dismay how coy that had sounded too. She bit her lip, suddenly consternated. "I'm sure you're *fine*. Really!"  
  
"Oh, I see. I'm fine, but not memorable… like Kent," he retorted, utterly offended.  
  
"Whitney! I have no idea," she said patiently.  
  
"Well, then, kiss me and find out," he demanded, and his narrowed eyes and huffy pout made him look almost child-like in the hazy street light.  
  
"Wha--?" she cried, stunned beyond belief. In the next instant, she made a stilted pointing gesture towards her ear, fully intending to make a crack about auditory hallucinations… but ridiculously enough, no words were coming out of her gaping mouth. It *was* moving. No actual sound though. Damn.  
  
"I have had a day from hell," he said through gritted teeth. "A day from *hell*. I think the least—the very least you could do for me is to tell me whether or not I'm a better kisser than Clark Kent."  
  
"But I don't—" But it suddenly struck her that she was way past the point of no return now. There was no way to explain that she had been joking, that she in fact had no memory of the only time she had ever been in lip lock with Clark, thanks to another one of Smallville's meteor mutants. In fact, each possible explanation her mind raced through was increasingly humiliating. Instead she settled upon, "If that's your idea of a pick-up line, you've got a lot to learn about women."  
  
"Oh, grow up," he growled, and added viciously, "It's not like Kent will think you're cheating on him."  
  
She snapped her head up, her expression changing from wounded to hardened in an instant. Her eyes were like daggers as she snapped, "God, you're an *asshole*." And with that, she reached across the truck, grabbed his collar, and in one swift motion that took him completely off balance, she jerked him towards her and kissed him with dutiful purpose.  
  
With stubborn resentment from her end and unfeeling shock from his, it was a kiss in name only, their lips meeting unresponsively in midair for a brief second. Within a moment, she began pulling away and forming the question, "Happy?"  
  
Unfortunately, the second syllable was refusing to come out. Whitney's lips still seemed to be in the way, strangely enough, despite the fact that she was sure she had backed away.  
  
It foolishly took her a second to realize that Whitney Fordman was, in fact, kissing her back in earnest.  
  
Her mind reeling and numb, she was unable to decide what to do next, and so she let him kiss her. And kiss her. She tried to remember to breathe as, in very small, very slow movements, he kissed both corners of her mouth, then the space between her lip and her nose. She didn't know at what point she'd closed her eyes. She also didn't know at what point her clutch of his collar had turned into her hand resting lightly on his chest. When he kissed her full on the lips again, this time her mouth opened slightly of its own accord.  
  
It immediately became impossible to tell whose tongue was doing what to whom. She only had the dim sensation that kissing Whitney was terribly different than anything she had imagined in her most secret of fantasies, and on the heels of that realization came another one: it was because her imagination had been wholly preoccupied with images of Clark until this very moment.  
  
This very moment, where the one thing that was starkly certain… was that Whitney was nothing at all like Clark.  
  
She was sure Clark, for example, would never press his teeth into her lower lip like that, or pull on it so gently. Clark's lip would also never be lined with the faint spring of rough stubble like that, and… was she nuzzling her lips over his skin? Chloe blushed furiously with that awareness, and she bolted upright in her seat, her eyes snapping open impossibly wide. To her alarm, she realized Whitney was expectantly leaning towards her again, his eyes still closed, and his expression still caught up in the moment. So, she did the only thing that seemed sensible just then.  
  
She punched him as hard as she could in the shoulder.  
  
It certainly served its purpose. With a loud yelp, Whitney was instantly sitting back in his seat, holding his shoulder in pain and glaring at her resentfully. "What was that for?!" he cried.  
  
"Can you please just drive me home?" she asked impatiently, avoiding his offended expression.  
  
"W- why?" he asked. "I thought—"  
  
"Fine, I'll walk." She lunged forward to collect her laptop awkwardly, but was stopped by his hand on her arm.  
  
"Chloe," he said quietly. And she couldn't remember when anyone had ever made the simple act of speaking her name sound instead like a plea and a question all wrapped into one.  
  
She blew air between her teeth, her gaze still glued to the dashboard. "You're a better kisser than Clark. There. Are you happy? Can I leave now?"  
  
Her abrupt cynicism confused him. "I don't care about that," he said immediately, then fell into uncertain silence. His hand slid off of her arm, and she tried not to shiver at the sudden loss. "Just… that was kinda…"  
  
"Stupid?" she offered, with sardonic cheer.  
  
She found his disappointment oddly affecting. "I was going to say 'nice'."  
  
Her eyes drifted up to meet his, but his expression was inscrutable. Her next words were calm, measured. "Look. I'm a lot of things, Whitney… but I'm not dumb."  
  
"I know."  
  
"You're… we're both confused."  
  
His eyebrows knotted into a question. "Uh… about what?"  
  
"You just found out your girlfriend is—"  
  
"Oh. You know, I think … I think I've known for a while." He stared at his lap in shame at the confession.  
  
"How could you stay with her?" she asked quietly, almost offended at the implications.  
  
"I dunno. I guess I kept hoping I was wrong." He glanced back up at her. "You must really think I'm an idiot now."  
  
"If you are, then I am too," she said simply, and he looked grateful for the response. "We're just… a couple of idiots, I guess."  
  
"I guess so." He smiled at her uncertainly, and she returned the exact same smile.  
  
"I just kissed my second guy this semester who's in love with Lana Lang, for example." She rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. "Truly, I must be a glutton for punishment."  
  
"Yeah, well, I obviously have some kind of sixth sense for picking out women who only have eyes for Clark Kent."  
  
"You're clearly a masochist."  
  
"Tell me about it."  
  
Her clutch on her laptop had loosened, and, the corners of her mouth tugging upward into an impish half-smile, she added brazenly, "You *are* a pretty good kisser though. Seriously. Lana's a dummy."  
  
Whitney nodded, grateful for the conciliation. "Kent is too." He paused. "It *was* nice. The kissing."  
  
"It was," she agreed amicably.  
  
He skipped a beat, then threw here a hopeful side-long glance. "You wanna do it again?"  
  
She gaped at him. "Whitney!"  
  
"What! Do you?" And his face was the very picture of innocence.  
  
She laughed, unsure, her blood still pounding in her ears. "I -- No! Goodbye!" Her eyes still wild with amazement, she threw open the truck door and hopped out in one fluid motion, taking off in the direction of her house without bothering to shut the truck's door behind her.  
  
"Chloe!" he called after her.  
  
"Good*bye*, Whitney!" she sang into the night air behind her, not looking back.  
  
He found himself watching her retreating figure until, miniscule, she skipped up her own front steps and disappeared into her doorway. Satisfied she was safe for the evening, he reached across the seat to close the passenger side door, and was secretly pleased to be allowed one last inhale of Chloe's perfume, which still lingered on the seat backing. It was curiously musky and smelled faintly of almonds, not at all like the cloyingly sweet floral scents in which Lana always seemed to marinate.  
  
Lana. Speeding off towards his own home, Whitney realized with sheer amazement that at the moment he was not, in fact, crushed like a helpless bug under the weight of the discovery he had made about her tonight… whatever the details ultimately turned out to be. Oh, his ego was definitely still throbbing with humiliation, but he also knew that was partially due to the fact that Chloe had borne witness to the entire thing. His cheeks burned at that knowledge.  
  
Seeing Kent's truck there had stung, sharply, and it was a betrayal on all sorts of levels for which Whitney wasn't sure he'd ever find the words. He loved Lana—had loved her since the moment he'd first seen her… loved her with an aching, adoring uncertainty he never thought he was capable of before she had come along. But the one thing tonight had not done… was surprise him. He had seen this coming since the moment last fall when he had seen Lana gaze up at Kent with a wonder with which she had never looked at Whitney. Looking back, he felt a pang of embarrassment at how stupidly he had tried to eradicate the threat of Kent with the scarecrow incident, which now seemed glaringly juvenile to him.  
  
And then there was Chloe. Chloe was the variable in this equation, although his head hurt to think of math after having just lived what was quite possibly the longest nine hours of his life. It suddenly struck him that if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, he would have to admit that the last few weeks' worth of stress, anxiety, insecurity and disappointment would have been a *lot* harder to trudge through, had Chloe Sullivan's bright, sunshine smile not been there to egg him on, to dare him to either match her wits or face the humiliation of being silenced by her superior ear for banter.  
  
He thought he'd done rather well at that, all things considered.  
  
Lana, by comparison, was considerably easier to get along with. The degree to which this realization dismayed him took him by surprise. Guys were *supposed* to like girls who were easy to get along with. Who were sweet, and complicit, who spoke softly, who never contradicted you, who were only happy when you were showering them with reassuring attention, who…  
  
… were just like his mother.  
  
The thought left an acrid taste in his mouth. He suddenly became painfully aware of the exact reason his father approved of Lana with so much enthusiasm. Because Lana was exactly the kind of girl his father would have picked out—had in fact picked out-- for himself at Whitney's age.  
  
The only problem was, Whitney was nothing like his father. He knew this wasn't just something he told himself as reassurance. Their personalities had clashed with regular ferocity ever since Whitney had memory… with his father almost always winning out, of course. The things that his father had wanted for him had never been what he'd wanted for himself.  
  
Except Lana.  
  
The epiphany was closely followed by the absolute conviction that the elder Mr. Fordman would hate, absolutely, wretchedly loathe, Chloe Sullivan. The fantasy of the first meeting of Chloe and his father made Whitney smile smugly to himself as he pulled into his driveway. He could already anticipate his father's snapping criticism afterwards: Chloe talked too much. Chloe asked too many questions. Chloe never crossed her legs. Chloe dressed too trashy. Chloe would never, ever take seriously many of the things that were issues of life or death to his father—would rib Whitney, sometimes good naturedly and sometimes not, if Whitney himself would ever start to echo those priorities.  
  
Every one of these insights made him feel increasingly sedated, and he indulged himself in further Chloe-musings as he wandered around the house, getting ready for bed in the eerie stillness. His continued meditation on Chloe Sullivan, he realized, was chasing away the strain of the day's happenings. That, and the sensation of her lips against his still lingered, if he tried hard enough to recall it.  
  
As he drifted off to a much deeper sleep than he could have ever guessed was possible that evening, he groggily determined a few things:  
  
Kissing Lana for the first time had been like claiming a wonderful prize he had won unexpectedly. Kissing Chloe tonight had been like…  
  
Like making an extraordinary discovery. Like finding buried treasure.  
  
Kent was even dumber than he'd ever thought possible.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
TBC… 


	13. Present Imperfect

XIII.  
  
"What are you going to do?"  
  
"I don't know, Clark. I just don't know." Hushed voices in a back corridor at school. The echo on weather-worn linoleum and plaster made her paranoid.  
  
"But after last night—"  
  
"We shared just one kiss, Clark. One single solitary kiss. It doesn't have to mean anything."  
  
*Does it?*  
  
He was biting back a thousand responses to her assertion, she could tell. He finally went with: "It doesn't have to *not*."  
  
"I'm just really confused."  
  
"I know, Lana."  
  
"You're the best, you know that?"  
  
A smile. "Nah, I'm just the guy trying to steal Whitney's girlfriend, remember?"  
  
A smile from her that matched his ruefulness. "Yeah, well… consider me stolen." The confession turned his features into a picture of sheer hope, and she hastened to add, "I just… I'm not free to do what's in my heart here. Please understand that."  
  
"I do."  
  
She nodded, knowing he does, completely. "He's been so good to me, and… and I think he needs me now, more than he ever has before. I can't just walk away from that."  
  
"What about what I need—what you need too? Doesn't that count for anything?"  
  
"I just don't know. I don't know what to do. I don't want to hurt either of you." Terrible, grim silence; choking in quiet. She blinked away tears, and couldn't bear to see if he was doing the same. Then—  
  
"I'll wait as long as you need. When you choose, I'll still be here. No matter how long it takes. I… I believe in you."  
  
And it suddenly struck her that she could quite easily love this boy forever.  
  
  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
"Hey, I was hoping you'd be here."  
  
Clark's voice made Chloe's typing immediately cease. She turned in her chair to face him with trepidation.  
  
"Hey, Clark."  
  
"Listen… did I catch you at a bad time? Because I can always come back…"  
  
"Now's fine. What's up?" She asked, unflappable.  
  
He seemed to collect his thoughts for a moment, and nodded to himself before beginning. "First of all, I wanted to say I'm really sorry for the way I talked to you at the food drive the other day."  
  
"It's OK," Chloe shrugged. "I guess I didn't go about it as suavely as I could have."  
  
"No, it's not OK. I don't think your paper is stupid, and for whatever it's worth, I don't think you've written anything that could ever be described as pointless."  
  
Chloe smiled at him, still tired from the previous evening. "Thanks, Clark. Apology accepted."  
  
Clark visibly relaxed. "I'm really glad. Thanks, Chloe." He thought for a moment. "The paper this morning was really great. You were right, anyway; you didn't make Lana look bad at all. You made it look like she was an innocent bystander. I liked the part where you said that if Lana had known about their history, she would have never worked with them. That was a really nice touch."  
  
"I'd like to think it's true," Chloe said tonelessly, but her expression revealed a whole lot more.  
  
Clark nodded again. "You're… a good friend, Chloe," he told her, a queer emphasis on the word "friend". Her eyes narrowed suspiciously at him for a moment, but then she gave him an exhausted smile.  
  
"Thanks, Clark. Nice to know I'm appreciated."  
  
"Definitely."  
  
"So, if you don't mind, I have to—"  
  
"Wait," Clark hurriedly added. "I just… if you don't mind my prying…"  
  
"Uh-oh."  
  
"Pete said you went to Metropolis with Whitney after the food drive?"  
  
Oh, God, he just *had* to say that name. "Um. Yeah. Why?"  
  
Clark faltered, clearly having been expecting a denial. "What's up with that?"  
  
Chloe shrugged, trying her best not to look guilty. She hadn't told anyone what had happened between them, because she couldn't make heads or tails of it for herself. She hadn't spoken to Whitney either, except to exchange a handful of furtive glances as they passed each other in the hallways and a murmured greeting or two. "Just a spur of the moment decision, I guess. It was fun. We saw Lex there."  
  
"Oh yeah? Small world," Clark mused. Then, mustering up his courage, he added, "Just… be careful around Whitney, OK?"  
  
She grinned at his concern. "I think I can handle him."  
  
"Chloe, the guy's a jerk, you know?"  
  
"He can be, yeah," she conceded.  
  
"I don't want him hurting you just to get on my nerves or something."  
  
Chloe's face was the picture of bafflement as she sipped her cooling coffee. "You? I don't get it, Clark-- what's this got to do with you? I mean, has it occurred to you that maybe we might actually just get along?"  
  
Yeah, she hadn't really thought he'd buy that. "Chloe, you don't have anything in common with the guy. I find that hard to believe."  
  
"We have more in common than you might think," she muttered, but then added, much louder, "He's cool to talk to. He's funny!"  
  
"Yeah, that's Whitney for you: a regular barrel of monkeys."  
  
"Clark!"  
  
"I'm just worried about you, Chloe." He put his hand on her arm, and she could only sigh.  
  
"Thanks, Clark, I appreciate your concern, but really, everything's fine."  
  
"OK. But if he tries anything, let me know and I'll let him have it."  
  
Chloe very nearly spewed coffee through her nose. Sputtering, she added, "I'll be sure to do that, Clark."  
  
"Good." Clark smiled at her affectionately. "I'll leave you to your work. I just wanted to make sure you were OK."  
  
"Thanks, Clark," she said again. "Oh, and Clark?"  
  
He turned to face her in the doorway.  
  
She could do this. She could get the words out without sounding too rancorous. "How's Lana?"  
  
Clark blinked. "Uh. She's fine. She feels bad about what happened, too, if that makes you feel any better. You should talk to her."  
  
"I'll do that."  
  
Clark flashed her one of his patent million-dollar grins before ducking out the door.  
  
It was nothing, Chloe reminded herself as her thoughts began to stray to the image of kissing Whitney in his truck. People kiss all the time and it means nothing. By no means was she going to be masochistic enough to fall for *two* guys in love with Lana. She'd have to be crazy.  
  
Except…  
  
Except that when all was said and done, the truth was that Whitney was the ideal of what she was starting to suspect was… her type. She had to admit that for all her jeering and crowing at "jockstraps", on a purely primal level she was attracted by brawn and broad shoulders, bravado and swagger. But, in her own defense, it was only when she knew that something more lurked underneath. It was the contrast that she found intriguing: Tough on the outside, sensitive on the inside. She chalked it up to possibly too many Clint Eastwood films as a child. Damn her dad and his Dirty Harry fetish.  
  
Because when Chloe mused over all her ill-conceived crushes this semester: Clark, Sean, Eric… there was definitely a pattern there. But she'd never considered looking at Whitney that way because she could have never guessed that there was anything underneath the arrogant gruffness except for possibly even more arrogance.  
  
She knew differently now. But there was no way she was going to allow herself to think about Whitney one second longer than she absolutely had to. For all that had happened between them, and for all that they'd seen, Whitney and Lana hadn't broken up, Whitney hadn't attempted to talk to her… and she'd be damned if she was going to be a Lana back-up for one more guy.  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
"I'm glad you're not mad," Lana said later that evening as Whitney sank into the space on the couch beside her. She flipped on the TV and pressed PLAY on the remote control, watching the previews on the video for a few seconds.  
  
"No, I'm not mad," Whitney said stiffly, not looking at her. "It's between you and—and Chloe." He glanced quickly at Lana to make sure she hadn't caught the way he had fumbled on the other girl's name.  
  
Of course she hadn't. Then again, she hadn't mentioned Chloe all day, either.  
  
"How was your dad feeling last night?" Lana prompted.  
  
"He's stable, but feeling a little more like his old self, I guess."  
  
"That's great, Whitney!"  
  
He forced himself to smile feebly at her before turning back to the film she'd rented. Silently, he watched the movie's opening credits, and inwardly cringed as he saw that Lana had picked out yet another Julia Roberts film.  
  
He brooded in silence for a few minutes, his knee bobbing impatiently near hers. Tapping on the couch's arm rest impatiently, he blurted out, "So what did you and Kent do after the food drive?"  
  
Smooth, Fordman. Real smooth.  
  
Lana paused, munching on popcorn, and gave a slow, measured answer. "Nothing. It took a while to finish up with the food drive, then I headed over to the Talon for a while and of course I ended up working a little… then Clark gave me a ride home."  
  
"That's all?" Whitney said, trying his very best to sound as non-accusatory as possible.  
  
"Yes, that's all," Lana answered. "Is everything all right, Whitney?"  
  
"Yeah, everything's great," he said, almost bitter. "Just great."  
  
"Well, that's… great."  
  
"Yeah. Great."  
  
Except that he could still smell almonds and newspapers and grimy truck all rolled into one and making him light-headed and… happy. The more he tried to push the image of a certain bright eyed girl aside, hair aglow in the lamplight like the round halos of the saints in the paintings she'd rambled on about so endlessly… the more he desperately surveyed the current scene and had to fight the urge to bolt without explanation.  
  
A few more moments of edgy silence and—"Lana, can I ask you a question?"  
  
Lana studied him thoughtfully, and turned off the TV. "Sure, Whitney, you can ask me anything you want. You know that."  
  
"Do you love me?"  
  
"Wh-- what?"  
  
"I *asked* you if you love me."  
  
He noted that she smiled uncertainly in exactly the same way she did when trying to hide something. "Where's that coming from?"  
  
"It's a very simple yes-or-no question, Lana," he said dryly. "Do. You. Love. Me? Yes or no? We've been together over a year. I know it's crossed your mind before."  
  
She breathed deeply, and didn't meet his eyes. "Whitney, I… this is so sudden… you know I care about you a lot."  
  
He gave a dry, hollow laugh and stood suddenly. "Yeah, you know what? That's what I thought."  
  
"Wait, where are you going?"  
  
He turned to face her, and began, sounding very tired, "Do you ever think about the way things are between us, and think maybe that's not the way things are supposed to go between two people?"  
  
"I don't understand!"  
  
"All the fighting, the constant ups and downs, the way I never know where you're coming from, and the way it's obvious you don't understand me at all." He was fighting to keep his voice on an even keel. "It's not the way things are supposed to go between people that love each other. Do you ever wonder why we're even still together?"  
  
"Whitney, why are you acting like this all of the sudden? Things were fine between us." Lana shook her head, still disbelieving. "I've told you a thousand times that I like spending time with you. What's the problem?"  
  
The problem is that all you do is lie to me and lie to yourself and you don't care at all, Whitney thought. But instead he just shook his head and said, "I… I need to get some air, Lana. I'll see you tomorrow."  
  
"Whitney!" she called after him, but her only response was the slamming of the back door.  
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
TBC……. 


	14. Subject

Whitney knew almost immediately where he was heading. It was Tuesday evening, after all, which meant that with any luck, Chloe would be parked at the Beanery (never the Talon-- not that he could blame her) chewing another pencil and tapping on her laptop, waiting for her dad to pick her up from his late shift.   
  
He wasn't really sure why he needed to see her so badly; he only knew that if he did see her, he'd feel better about-- well, everything. He'd at least caught on that Chloe had an mysterious ability to snap him out of the doldrums, and he was definitely in a funk after that disastrous talk with Lana.  
  
Still, when he spotted her in the Beanery, her back turned to the entrance, he paused. He hadn't spoke more than a few words to her since *it* had happened. Since he'd lost his mind and asked her to kiss him, and since the shock of her agreement had made him lose control of his better judgment.   
  
Since they'd briefly, sweetly made out in his pick up truck.   
  
Whitney inhaled sharply at that recall, and decided to forge ahead. He'd faced down 250 pound linebackers before. He could certainly strike up a conversation with a freshman girl that barely hit the five-feet-tall mark.   
  
He waited until he was directly behind her, and cleared his throat exaggeratedly, prompting her to turn her head in his direction.  
  
"Oh," she said, completely unenthused. "Hey."  
  
"Hey. Can I sit down?"  
  
She hesitated ever so slightly before she said, "Sure. Why not."  
  
He nodded and took a seat across from her. Chloe typed two more keystrokes, then sighed.  
  
"Can we just fast forward through the awkward lull in the conversation and get to the part where you tell me what you want?"   
  
He stared at the ceiling and sighted tolerantly. "Now, that is not fair. Why do you have to *assume* I want anything?"  
  
She stared at him dubiously. "Call it woman's intuition."  
  
"Well, you're wrong. I just happened to be wandering by, and saw you through the window and decided to say hello. Is that a crime?"  
  
"Fordman, with all due respect, you are one miserably bad liar," she told him guilelessly. "Spill it. What'samatter-- have a fight with Lana?"  
  
He lowered his gaze guiltily. "Kind of."  
  
"You know, having never actually been in one, advice about relationships is not my forte," she said. "Although if you're actually looking for crappy and useless relationship advice, I'm sure one of your football buddies will be more than happy to provide that."  
  
"I'm not looking for advice," he retorted defiantly.  
  
"Ah, I see, so this whole Alpha Male I-don't-need-no-stinkin-map approach to driving that guys usually do extends to more personal matters in your case."  
  
Whitney made a disgusted sound and stood. "Forget it. I don't need this. Come to think of it, I don't even know why I came here."   
  
He started to walk past her as she breathed, "Bye."  
  
Something in her voice gave him pause then, and he took a deep breath and decided to try again. Whitney found himself once again staring at her back, at the slope of the back of her neck, and absently noted that the pale peaches and cream skin had only a couple of small beauty marks, but was otherwise porcelain and creamy. So different from his own skin, which freckled and ruddied at the slightest exposure to sunlight.   
  
He fought the urge to sidle up behind her and study the back of her neck up close. Instead, he mustered up every ounce of bravado and leaned on the back of her chair.   
  
Chloe sat upright, expectant, but unmoving. "You're back," she said lamely, and was ever so glad he could not see her face at the moment.   
  
"Yeah. I lied. I do know why I came here."  
  
"Oh?" She fought to keep her tone as neutral as possible. "Why's that?"  
  
His words came out very slowly, and so low that only she could hear-- and even she had to strain to hear them. Almost... purring. If Whitney were the type to purr. Which he wasn't.  
  
"Because. I can't-- stop thinking about you. Since the other night."  
  
She kept her very best poker face on as she spoke. "That's not good."  
  
That made him let go of the chair back, and he asked stiffly, "Why not?"  
  
"Because," she explained, her voice wavering, "You're otherwise spoken for. And she's my friend, for better or for worse. And-- I don't do things like that."  
  
Whitney nodded, and she finally turned to face him, still sitting. Examining his expression carefully, she began: "Look. I would be lying if I said that what happened didn't affect me. But--"  
  
"Can we talk somewhere else?" he asked uncomfortably, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He noticed too many familiar faces in the Beanery glancing their way questioningly, and when she followed his furtive glances around the room, she nodded her assent, packed up her belongings and followed him out the door.   
  
The street was no better. A couple of people had the audacity to continue staring at them curiously through the Beanery's window, and it was no help that the Talon was within view as well. Chloe pulled Whitney into the space between the Beanery and the next building. It was hopelessly dark and suspiciously humid, but at least it was private.  
  
"OK, speak," she ordered good naturedly. "I'm listening."  
  
"I..." he closed his mouth and shook his head. "I don't know what to say. I just wanted to see you."  
  
"What for?"  
  
He shrugged haplessly. She sighed and looked at him, hard. "Is this about the kissing thing?"  
  
He was glad she couldn't see the way he so easily flushed. "Sort of. I guess."  
  
"Well, I guess I'm flattered that it apparently impressed you so much, but the bottom line is that you're still in love with someone else, and that's that."  
  
He shook his head and grabbed her free arm gently. "It's not like that. I do still have feelings for Lana. But--"  
  
She stared at him expectantly, but nothing was forthcoming.  
  
Instead, he gave a shaky sigh and tried a wholly different tack. "Look, Sullivan, if you're going to make me admit I've got feelings for you without saying you have them for me too, well, then, I'm not even going to bother making an ass out of myself. I'll just—just leave right now." But he stood rooted to the spot, and much to his relief, he was rewarded with a slow smile spread across her face in the scant light.  
  
"You," she said dubiously, "You have... feelings. For me."  
  
He nodded helplessly, his eyes shining in the moonlight. Without warning, she threw her head back and laughed, a deep belly laugh that bowled her over enough to need to lean against the wall for balance. She laughed and laughed, until his eyebrows were knitted together in serious concern.  
  
"This isn't exactly the reaction I was hoping for," he admitted.  
  
That only made her laugh harder. "You're insane, you know that?" she cried. "Completely crazy."  
  
"Wow. Ouch." He couldn't look at her just then. "I guess I'll be on my way now..."  
  
"No!" She stopped him with her hand on his shoulder, still grinning. "God, you're such a nerd!"   
  
"Chloe, I do *not* understand you sometimes."  
  
"Shut up!" she laughed. "So, tell me more about these feelings. I mean, my ego would love to know that a single kiss from me turned your attention from the goddess that is Lana Lang to plain little old me--"  
  
"--you're not plain, and it wasn't just--"  
  
"Shut UP!" she said, and poked him in rapid succession in the shoulder. "However! However, I am having a hard time seeing this, I gotta be honest."  
  
"I don't know. OK? You just make me feel... different."  
  
"Different than what, pray tell?"  
  
He thought for a moment, then looked into her eyes carefully. "It's like... before I started getting to know you, I was feeling really hopeless. You know? Everyone was feeling so sorry for me, with the scholarship thing, and--"  
  
"You were feeling pretty sorry for yourself, too."  
  
"Exactly," he admitted, abashed. "But you weren't like that. You just... challenge me all the time. I don't know. You don't let me get away with my crap about anything important."  
  
"So you're telling me it actually turns you on when I give you a hard time," she asked dryly, but there was a teasing note in her voice.   
  
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Maybe a little."  
  
"Mmm. I kinda like the sound of that." Her lips twisted into a wry grin. "I have to admit that you've been pretty challenging for me too. However, there's still that matter of you having a girlfriend."  
  
"I don't know," he said, and kicked the ground self consciously. "I don't know if I'm ready to just walk away from that now, or what."  
  
She nodded, disappointed, and it wasn't lost on him. "Are you ready to walk away from Clark?" he asked.  
  
The question made her flinch, and she could only stare at him, all wide-eyed helplessness.  
  
"But," he began, the words almost painful coming out, "I think there's... something there. Between us. I think it deserves to be given a chance too." But his words were met with a contemplative silence from Chloe, so he prompted, "Do you think so too?"  
  
She smiled demurely at him. "Maybe." A thoughtful pause. "I'm afraid."  
  
"What, of me?"  
  
"Of-- yes." She sighed. "Of rejection and-- of not measuring up against Lana for one more guy."  
  
"You think this is easy for me?" he asked softly. "I mean. I'm talking about. About starting something with you here. I don't know. And what if tomorrow Kent wakes up and realizes his best friend is actually pretty hot? Where's that gonna leave me?"  
  
"You think I'm hot?" she murmured curiously, and the look he gave her made her shiver.   
  
"You said you thought I was cute," he reminded her.  
  
She rolled her eyes and leaned back against the wall again thoughtfully. "I don't know what to tell you, Whitney," she said. "I don't know if we can do anything about-- about whatever the hell we've got here."  
  
"I can't just break up with her for you," he said with dawning realization. "That'll mess up a lot, between a lot of people."  
  
"Yeah," Chloe agreed. "We're such an incestuous little group, you know?"  
  
Whitney gave her the strangest look. "I guess..." He waited and asked shyly, "Soooo... have you thought about me too? Or is this totally one sided or what?"  
  
"Jesus, you're pushy," she muttered. Then she sighed. "Yeah, I thought about you. I didn't know what to think, actually. It's not like I have much in the way of experience when it comes to these things."  
  
"Me either," he confessed. "Lana is the only serious relationship I've ever had."  
  
"It's one more than me," she laughed, embarrassed suddenly.   
  
"I don't mind." His voice was soft, gentle, a rare tone that put her at ease. "I just-- want to get to know you better. As a girl."  
  
"As a girl?" she asked, feigning offense. "Oh. You mean, and not as the person who kicks your ass when you turn in your article late."  
  
"Right." He added for good measure, "As more than a friend."  
  
"You're not getting off my staff that easy, Fordman."  
  
He laughed. "I said I'd be there till the end of the school year."  
  
"Better be," she breathed, gazing up at him in the dim lamplight. She suddenly wondered if he, too, could feel the low hum of electricity between them. She realized it had always been there, only muted, and was only now allowing herself to really acknowledge it. It felt like a small dam bursting free.  
  
"I will," he murmured, and the nearness of him suddenly made her heart pound in her ears.   
  
"OK."  
  
"I promise."  
  
"That's good."  
  
This time, when he leaned forward to find her lips with his, Chloe didn't push him away. This time, she raised her chin to meet him, her small arm sliding protectively around his neck, pulling him closer to her, till she was allowing him to gently pin her against the faintly clammy brick exterior of the building. She didn't even care that her book bag clunked to the ground around her feet, dimly aware that that was her laptop making the bulk of that sound. Her other hand was busy sliding around his waist, under his jacket, and the soft gasp he gave against her lips when her hand touched the small of his back thrilled her to no end.   
  
After a brief moment, Whitney pulled back, smiling at her with open joy that she had only caught bare glimpses of before, and without warning, he grabbed her by the waist and spun her around in the alleyway midair with a great whooping sound. She laughed and shrieked and clung to him, but then she noticed his wide-eyed, terribly serious expression…  
  
"Let's go somewhere else," he whispered somberly in his best deadpan. "It totally reeks back here."  
  
Snickering, she let herself be led by the hand out of the alleyway and towards his truck, her book bag swinging behind her.   
  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
  
It was remarkable how brightly the stars and moon illuminated the night without any streetlamps around. Chloe sat perched on the edge of the back of Whitney's truck, the back door dangling against the back of her legs. This was one thing in which she could honestly admit Smallville's superiority to Metropolis: In Metropolis, you couldn't see any stars without a telescope. Here, in a quiet, anonymous field, you couldn't see anything *but* stars as far as the eye could see.  
  
"This is amazing," she half whispered. Whitney's upturned eyes glittered in the night's illumination as he nodded.   
  
"Do you know what any of them are called?" he asked, gesturing with his chin towards the endless blanket of stars above them.  
  
"No way," she laughed. "I suck at science."  
  
"Me too."  
  
"Uh. I think that one's the Big Dipper. Or the Little Dipper. I get them confused."  
  
"Me too." He grinned at her and held her gaze, and she had to smile back.  
  
"God, you're so tall," she mused. Suddenly, she shifted around onto her knees so that she was sitting on her legs. "There. Now I can look you in the eye without needing a neck brace."   
  
He just kept on smiling, and said, "You're so pretty, Chloe. How come I never noticed before?"  
  
"I keep telling you you're an idiot," she said, without a single trace of derision.   
  
"I must be," he agreed. And his hand crept over hers, and he kissed her ever so gently, his thumb caressing her cheek almost as an afterthought. She kissed him back, sighing into him, and it took considerable self-restraint to push him away again.  
  
"We came out here to talk," she reminded him. "My dad is going to be picking me up in less than an hour, so..."  
  
He nodded and grew pensive. "I've been thinking."  
  
"I'm worried already."  
  
"Do you mind?" he asked flatly, but there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Take me seriously for a minute, OK?"  
  
"OK. This is me taking you completely seriously."  
  
He looked at her doubtfully, but went on: "Lana and me-- we've been one step away from breaking up for weeks. Before I started getting to know you, even."  
  
"Yeah, I know." She met his surprised expression with, "Well, I've been getting the play by play from you-know-who."  
  
He let out a tense breath and continued. "But. If you and me get together and then I finally break things off with Lana--"  
  
She grimaced. "Oooh, potentially ugly scenario there."  
  
"Exactly."   
  
Chloe realized right then that she was in no mood to make demands, ultimatums, or even suggestions. She wanted to be able to be sure later on that whatever happened next was of his very own volition. She asked cautiously, "So what do you want to do?"  
  
"I was thinking, if I break things off with Lana, and then you and I could get to know each other for a while without letting everyone know--"  
  
"You mean, sneak around?"  
  
"No. No. I mean, keep it quiet for a while."  
  
"Ah. So actually, you mean sneak around."  
  
He bit his lip. "Yeah. Well. Maybe. So that people won't think you broke us up."  
  
"Wait, why is everyone going to blame me?"  
  
"Because they just are," he said, his frustration mounting slightly. "You've got to trust me on this. This way, once everyone's over the fact that me and Lana aren't together anymore, we could come out about it in public."  
  
"We? Like, you and me."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Oh. Um. About what?"  
  
"About *us*."  
  
"There's an 'us' now? Did I doze off during the part where you asked me about this, or what?"  
  
"You don't want that?"  
  
Instead of answering, she regarded him briefly, then punched him in the arm.  
  
"Ow."  
  
"So what are you saying, you want me to be your-- your--"  
  
"I'm saying," he said slowly, "That I'm a one-girl kinda guy. You know?"  
  
"Uh huh."  
  
"What, you don't believe me?"  
  
"Well, seeing as I'm girl number two right now for you, can you really blame me?"  
  
"Extenuating circumstances."  
  
"Ohhh, I love it when you use big words, Fordman."  
  
He kissed her again without warning, far more ardently than before, making her whimper softly against his mouth. When he let go, they were both breathing significantly heavier than they had been before and her pupils looked impossibly huge in the moonlight.  
  
But as obsessively preoccupied as he'd been about this all day, Whitney couldn't help turning serious again, and he leaned back onto his elbows with a hapless sigh. "I just want to be careful. I don't want to screw this up. For anybody."   
  
"We'll be fine, Whitney. Everyone will be fine," she assured him, and after a moment's hesitation, she rested her chin on his shoulder. "Trust me."  
  
He smiled, his nose nuzzling hers. "I do," he said truthfully.  
  
Ultimately, Whitney wasn't sure whether he could fall in love with this weird girl who was sometimes infuriating, often outrageous, and always astounding-- but he was sure as hell more than willing to find out.  
  
TBC...  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++   
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I totally lied. This time, there really is only one more chapter. It's all my betas' fault, for making me think so goddamn much and making me realize that huge transitions were missing from this story. 


	15. Past Finite

It wasn't that Clark didn't notice that Chloe was female. Pete had often accused him of this --implicitly or explicitly-- but the very thought was absurd. Of course he knew, on a totally assumptive level, that Chloe was female. In the same way he knew that she, like him, breathed nitrogen and oxygen and needed to eat and sleep. It was knowledge *a priori*, no new discovery or epiphany. Chloe herself, with her big clunky shoes and her purposely outrageous wardrobe, seemed to recognize her own femininity in only the most peripheral of ways, and then only when absolutely necessary. It was comforting, almost, at least for Clark. Chloe was nothing sexual to Clark, and... safe. Not like Lana, who...  
  
Had never made out with Whitney quite so enthusiastically as Chloe was on the desk in front of the Wall of the Weird that day after school.  
  
It took a while for Clark's brain to register exactly what he was seeing. It was as though someone had sliced a few frames from another reality into Clark's own, so far was it from everything he knew. It was only when he saw how Whitney's hand sliding up Chloe's leg was making her tighten her grip through Whitney's hair that finally snapped Clark back to his senses.  
  
He supersped it out of there, barely able to breathe, and went directly to his loft. To think. Clark had a lot of thinking to do.   
  
  
******************  
  
  
"Whitney!" Clark's familiar, muted tenor ringing across the school parking lot made the other boy turn to face him. Whitney's entire posture broadcast impatience.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
Clark studied Whitney's face for a moment, the lines of his own all grim determination. He took so long that Whitney finally blurted out, "Got something to say?"  
  
"Yeah... I've got something to say." Clark faltered. "I-- I know about you and Chloe, Whitney."  
  
Whitney's twitching jaw muscle was the only giveaway that Clark had struck a nerve. "I don't know what you're talking about," Whitney said, his voice remarkably toneless. "Now, if you don't mind, I was on my way to--"  
  
"I saw you guys kissing in the back of the Torch office yesterday," Clark had said it all in one breath, as though it had actually all been one long word. He braced himself for the anger and denial that was sure to come.  
  
Instead, Whitney asked quietly, "Does Lana know?'  
  
Clark shook his head.  
  
"Wow, Kent, I'm surprised you didn't race over to her to tell her the news yourself," Whitney said, his voice oozing sarcasm.  
  
Clark set his jaw and said pointedly, "I didn't want to hurt her."  
  
At that, Whitney laughed dryly. "Oh, I know, you'd never hurt Lana," he said. "It's everyone else whose feelings don't matter."  
  
"Whitney, I don't know why you're always so angry with me, but I swear, if you hurt Chloe--"  
  
"Me? Hurt Chloe? Oh, that's rich! You've practically turned that into a fucking art form."  
  
Clark's brow furrowed in confusion. This was definitely not the reaction he'd been expecting. "Look, you either tell Lana yourself, or--"  
  
"Or what? You will?" Whitney huffed derisively. "Is that before or after she tells me you were in her bedroom while I was in Metropolis last week?" Clark's jaw went slack with shock as Whitney pressed on: "Yeah, I guess I'm not the big idiot you wish I were, huh, Kent? See, I saw you. Me and Chloe both saw you. We went to her house and saw your truck and--" Whitney's breath hitched with emotion, and he suddenly had to look away, lips pressed together in grim resentment.  
  
"So what's Chloe-- revenge?" Clark said after a moment. "If that's how it is, then you're an even bigger lowlife than I ever thought. You don't deserve either of them." He fully expected Whitney to deck him. He even watched the other boy clench and unclench his fist, then relax.   
  
Whitney shifted his weight until he was nose to nose with Clark, and his next words came out low and defiant.  
  
"You. Know. Jack." Whitney stared at Clark, almost serene. "And I don't know who you think you are, but you can't judge what *anybody* deserves. I don't need to explain myself to you, but since you already fucked up my last relationship, I'm not gonna give you a way to fuck up my next one."   
  
"Whitney, look, for whatever it's worth, that night-- nothing happened, we just--"  
  
"I don't wanna hear it!" Whitney waved him into silence abruptly. "I keep telling you I'm not a fucking moron and I know exactly what's going on. And if it were up to me right now, I'd be doing things differently. But I care about Chloe, and I don't want people talking crap about her. I get to leave Smallville High this May; she doesn't. When we're good and ready, people will know what they need to know. You understand?"  
  
"But Lana--"  
  
"Lana will be fine," Whitney said patiently, his voice like a razor. "She's got you, doesn't she?"  
  
Clark averted his gaze.   
  
"Yeah, that's what I thought. So if you care about Chloe like you say you do, you'll let me handle this for once."  
  
Clark's nostrils flared with anger, but he kept silent, saying only, "I don't trust you."  
  
"Yeah, well, if it makes you feel better, I trust you even less," Whitney retorted. "But you know what? At the end of the day, this is still not your business. Anyway, what do you care? You don't want Chloe; not like that."  
  
"Chloe's my friend," Clark said, sounding like a protest. "I don't want her used as a... a replacement for Lana."  
  
"The irony here is fucking unbearable."  
  
Clark's next words died on his lips, and he pressed them together, abashed as Whitney let out a tense breath. "Look, I have to go."  
  
Clark nodded. "Just promise me you'll-- you'll treat Chloe the way she deserves to be treated."  
  
Whitney gave him a hard glare. "Y'know, I know I've told you... things before. Because for some crazy reason, as much as I don't want to, there's a part of me that-- that trusts you. At least about some things. Now it's time you do me the same favor."  
  
"I just want... whatever makes Chloe happy," Clark said, miserable.  
  
At that, Whitney's lips twisted into an ironic grin. "Just think, Kent. I may be it."  
  
Still lost in thought, Clark watched Whitney's truck speed off a few seconds later.  
  
  
***************************  
  
"So... tell me about Justin."  
  
"Justin who?"  
  
"That guy at the Torch-- hey, are you blushing?"  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, Whitney."  
  
"I saw him checking you out, you know."  
  
"You think everybody checks me out."  
  
"That's cause everybody does."  
  
At that, Chloe laughed. "Whatever! Anyway, he so wasn't."  
  
"Hooo-oh, he so was. I actually think he likes you. Seriously."  
  
Chloe shrugged. "We've been friends a long time, is all."  
  
"Just be careful."  
  
"Why?"   
  
"Because." Whitney sighed. "He just creeps me out a little. He just seems like the kinda guy that'll snap easy."  
  
"I think you're just jealous," she teased, but he didn't smile.  
  
"I'm telling you, there's something a little off about that guy."  
  
"You're so cute to worry about me."  
  
"Don't make me sorry I said anything, missy."  
  
Chloe pretended to swoon. "Ooh, I love it when you get all John Wayne on me!"  
  
"John who?"  
  
"People *have* told you that you're hopeless, right?"  
  
He grinned, looking quite like a cat with a bellyful of canary. "Yeah, but I never listen."  
  
"It's what I like about this thing we've got going here, you know? That thin line between love and want-to-strangle."  
  
He laughed. "Ain't it grand?"  
  
And he thought her smile could light up the whole sky just then. "Yeah, you know... it's kinda growing on me."  
  
**********************************  
  
  
  
  
It should have been her standing next to him on that awful day, but he was far too crushed to distinguish between shoulders to cry on. Had Mr. Fordman hung on long enough for his son to have sorted through the confusion in his personal life, and work up enough courage to make the necessary choices, Whitney would have been groping through the downpour for Chloe, and with all of Smallville watching as she readily reached back to grasp his hand.   
  
Instead, even in death Mr. Fordman had been unable to cut Whitney even that much slack, and had done things the way he always had-- his way-- and now Whitney stood flanked by Lana and his mother, sobs blinding him with equal parts loss and regret.  
  
He didn't even notice the look that passed between Clark and Lana as he turned to leave the funeral. But Chloe noticed. It made her wish she hadn't blinked away the raindrops quite so hard.  
  
  
**************************  
  
"Hey, Chloe?"  
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
"You ever wonder if Clark--" Whitney's voice dropped off and he frowned thoughtfully.  
  
"If Clark what?"  
  
"Nothing, forget it."  
  
"No, what were you going to say?"  
  
"Nothing, you'd just think I was being a jealous jerk."  
  
"Whitney, you know I'm incurably nosy, so why don't we just skip the part where I whine until you cant stand it any more and just get right to the part where you say what you were going to say?"  
  
"Wow. Pain in the *ass*."  
  
She propped herself up on one elbow and shifted around on the truck's bed, so that she was staring down her nose at him, nice and stern. "Spill it now, Fordman."  
  
"I was just going to ask if you ever wonder how Clark's able to just rescue people all the damn time."  
  
"I *know* how. He's got a guilt complex that makes Catholicism seem like a walk in the park."  
  
"That's why, not how." Whitney sighed. The past few weeks had taken a lot out of both of them, and Chloe studied the evidence he had to show for it around his eyes as he went on. "I mean, how the hell did he find you buried in the middle of that field?" He felt her shudder next to him, and he instantly regretted mentioning it so casually. He scooted closer and hugged her tighter instinctively. "I'm glad as all hell that he did, don't think for an instant--" And he kissed the tip of her nose.  
  
"I thought Lana saw where I was in her-- whatever. Visions."  
  
"I don't know," Whitney admitted. "I don't like asking her about it. She... we didn't talk about it."  
  
Chloe nodded. "That's how he knew though. How else do you explain it?"  
  
"I was thinking..." He bit his lip, but went on. "I was thinking he was maybe one of the meteor freaks."  
  
Quite suddenly, Chloe's mouth was the perfect O. "Have you lost your mind?"  
  
"It's just a thought! I mean, think about it. How did he get you out of the ground all by himself?"  
  
"This is the stupidest idea, like, ever."  
  
"What? Why?!"  
  
"Because, hello! I'm his best friend, and very, very little gets by me." She seemed exceedingly smug at that moment.  
  
"Yeah, I noticed," Whitney retorted.  
  
"Sooo-- don't you think I would have noticed something all this time?"  
  
"I guess."  
  
"Right. Besides, what's his mutation? An uncanny knack for being at the right place at the right time?"  
  
"OK, OK," he said, exasperated and laughing. "It didn't sound so stupid in my head."  
  
She grinned, then added, "Anyway, Clark can't possibly be a meteor freak. They all always turn out to be evil."  
  
Whitney gave her a dubious look, and she rolled her eyes.   
  
"Oh, just shut up and kiss me, Fordman."  
  
*******************************  
  
TBC...  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Sorry this took so long to post here at FF.Net. It's actually been up in its entirety on my web site at http://www.geocities.com/misswyndy/vastmain.htm for several months. For everyone else, I sure hope the wait was worth it. 


	16. Future Imperfect

"Why do I have to keep my eyes closed?"  
  
Whitney let out something like an exasperated growl. "Will you just be quiet and trust me?"  
  
"I can do the latter," Chloe muttered mischievously. "Can't make any promises about the former."   
  
He smirked in spite of himself at that, and led her silently through the grass as he admonished, "No peaking!"  
  
"Hey, trust me, remember?"  
  
Suddenly they stopped, and Whitney didn't say anything more, just surveyed the scene quietly for a few minutes before murmuring, "Just give me a second."  
  
"Sure thing," she said, too brightly. She waited patiently with her eyes screwed shut tightly for all of five seconds before curiosity finally overcame her. One eye pried itself open, against her will even, and then both of them snapped wide open at what she saw.  
  
"A picnic?" she cried, sounding more indignant than she'd intended. Whitney froze without turning to face her, his shoulders slumping.  
  
"I could just kill you, you know that?" He sighed and turned to her, genuinely wounded. "I told you to keep your eyes *closed*."   
  
"Well..." she drawled, thinking fast. "You, um. Took too long!"  
  
Whitney shook his head in disbelief. "Jesus. Well, as long as you completely freakin' ruined my surprise, you may as well lend a hand here setting up."  
  
Chloe kneeled down and did just that. And soon, they'd both started on the ham and cheese sandwiches that, by their haphazard composition, were obviously hand-made by Whitney.  
  
"So this was your big surprise? A picnic?" she asked between mouthfuls of sandwich.   
  
Whitney shook his head and swallowed. "I wanted to talk to you."  
  
"Sounds scarily serious."  
  
"It is." He met her gaze, and her mischievous grin faded.  
  
"Is everything OK?" she asked tentatively.  
  
"Yes. No. I mean--" He weighed his next words carefully under her confused gaze, then began: "I've been thinking a lot about.. About my father, and what I told you while you were in the hospital."  
  
It took a moment for her to catch the reference. "The Army and medals of honor stuff?"  
  
"Right. And I was thinking how if I stayed in Smallville, I'd never be happy, and always wonder what I could have really done with my life."  
  
"Oh, Whitney."  
  
He rushed on: "I've just been thinking about my future. And the worst thing is, I can't see any of the things there now that I always thought *would* be there. I can't see any of my old dreams coming to pass anymore, and for a long time that scared the shit out of me."  
  
"How can you say that?" Chloe asked, her voice hoarse. "I mean, despite all outward appearances to the contrary, you're pretty smart."  
  
"Gee, thanks."  
  
"Shut up and let me finish," she said, almost pleading. "You're only eighteen. I know it sounds cliché, but you've got your whole life in front of you. It's ridiculous that you sound so hopeless. You'll figure something out."  
  
"That's the thing," he said quickly. "I did figure something out. I just didn't want to hurt you."  
  
"Why do I not like the sound of that?"  
  
Whitney sighed, sounding slightly pained. While she watched, he pulled out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to her, all business. He watched her expectantly as she read it, her expression quickly falling into shock.  
  
"You're joining the-- the Marines?!"  
  
"Yeah," he said, at a loss for the anger blazing in her eyes. "I thought--"  
  
"Like hell, you thought," Chloe spat out, furious. "You didn't think at all! Have you completely flown over the cuckoo's nest here? The Marines?!?!"  
  
"It's-- my father--"  
  
"Your father wasn't even in the Marines! He was in the Army! Are you insane?" By this time, she was blinking back furious tears, and she threw the remains of her sandwich onto the sheet, standing to leave. "I'm sorry, Whitney. I was stupid enough to think we maybe had something *good* going on here, and you're going to leave-- leave everything just so you can avoid having to actually make any hard decisions. You're not the person I thought you were, Whitney. I'm sorry I ever thought otherwise."  
  
The sight of her storming off jarred him out of his shocked silence. "Chloe, wait!" he cried, and headed after her doggedly. He easily caught up to her with a few quick strides. "Where are you going? Your car's a half hour drive away."  
  
"I'll figure something out," she said, sounding far more hapless than she would have liked. "See, that's what people do when they have problems. They figure out solutions."  
  
His wounded expression sent a pang through her. "This is the best I could come up with!" he said, his own temper building. "I'm not leaving you! I just--"  
  
He took so long in finishing that she found herself gently prodding: "Just what?"  
  
"I just want to be someone you can be proud of," he finally answered, miserable. "I mean. You're so smart, Chloe. After I graduate, if I stay here, I'll end up working in my father's stupid store for years and you'll go off to college and be a famous writer and everyone is going to wonder, 'Why is she even with that loser?' And... it won't take you long to wonder too, and--"  
  
"Whitney, shut the hell up for a minute, will you?" she sniffled, and touched his arm gently. "You don't have to do this. I already *am* proud of you."  
  
"Uh. You are?"  
  
"Yeah. You're the bravest person I know, you know that? That's what I've always liked about you, Whitney, even back when you were just an annoying jock to me." He gave the tiniest hint of a grin as she went on: "You never run away from a fight; you're always ready to just-- do what needs to be done, even if it means taking big risks, and.. God, you're an idiot."  
  
He blinked. "You had me right up until the 'you're an idiot' part." In the next instant, she was waving her own piece of paper, culled from her bag, inches away from his face.  
  
"Read it," she demanded, her tone surprisingly gentle. Tired, maybe.  
  
Whitney did as she asked, and in an instant, incredulity spread over his face. "An application to Kansas State?" He looked over the papers repeatedly in disbelief. "Who filled these out?"  
  
"The College Application Fairy, who else?" She rolled her eyes. "I did, you dork."  
  
"Wh-- why?"  
  
"Whitney." She sighed, and took his hand. "Don't mess this up and let me finish, OK? Getting to know you has been like-- finding out I was this whole other person. It's like you're this amazing judge of character, see? So when you tell me you think I'm smart, or amazing, or that I'm going to be wildly successful, or that you think I'm--" and here she couldn't help blushing a little-- "beautiful... you make me believe it, too. I wanted. I wanted to do something that would give some of that back to you, maybe. I don't know. Am I rambling?"  
  
He smiled, still awestruck. "Maybe a little. It's OK."  
  
She let out a tense breath and continued. "I did my research. Your SATs are over 200 points higher than the minimum requirements. Your GPA, last time you told me, isn't wildly impressive or anything, but it'll do. You'd get in. You could even keep playing football! You could try out for the team in the fall, and they'd be crazy not to take you. And also--"  
  
"You amaze me."  
  
She paused, and returned his grin.  
  
"You really think I can do this?"  
  
"Duh, of course you can. *If* you want to. Uh, is it to late to back out of the Marines thing?"  
  
Whitney thought for a moment. "I don't know. I don't think so. God, how would I pay for this?"  
  
"Uh. There's this amazing thing called *student loans* that you may want to look into. Call me crazy."  
  
"I don't know the first thing-- I--"  
  
"My Dad said he'd help you," Chloe blurted out, then blushed furiously. It made Whitney's grin widen.  
  
"You told your Dad about us, huh?"  
  
"Don't look so smug," she chided. "Just-- maybe I'm way off here, but I feel like we really click on some surreal level. I just didn't want to..." She sighed, embarrassed, and averted her gaze.  
  
Whitney's eyes darted from the application to Chloe's face, and in the next moment, he was hugging her tightly to him. "I don't know what to say," he whispered into her hair fiercely.  
  
She rested her cheek on his shoulder, and returned his embrace. "Say you'll stay," she answered finally, her voice breaking on the last world.  
  
"I'd be crazy not to."  
  
"We'd have a lot to figure out, you know."  
  
"Yeah," he nodded, breaking the embrace and slipping his hand into hers. "It's doable."  
  
She grinned, worry-free just then, and echoed his optimism. "Yeah, it's doable."  
  
  
********************************************************  
  
  
Today was the day Lana finally began to set her life in order the way *she* wanted it to be. After a full evening about fretting over Whitney's cryptic angry words to her and avoiding Clark's phone calls, she had woken up that morning having finally reached her utmost limit for allowing other people to make decisions for her. Today, it was time to start taking charge once and for all.   
  
Glancing out the window that morning, she had found it poetic justice that storm clouds seemed to be gathering in Smallville today. Just as well. Today was going to be the first step towards what would no doubt be a far more tumultuous future... and Lana was glad.  
  
The first order of business was Chloe Sullivan, the closest thing she had to a girlfriend since quitting the squad. She really liked Chloe and found her to be a steadfast ally who had been immediately willing to make frank overtures of friendship, which Lana had really appreciated. Lana knew that if she had any hope of becoming closer to Chloe, the business about the charity had to be resolved. She couldn't just let bad air like that stay uncleared.  
  
Which was why she marched right up to Chloe right before first period, and, drawing an unsteady breath, she launched into her speech. "Chloe, I need to talk to you. Do you have time right now?"  
  
Chloe hesitated imperceptibly, then met Lana's eyes with full accordance. "Sure, Lana. What's up?"  
  
"It's about the other day with the charity," Lana began, making herself sound more confident than she really felt. "I saw what you wrote about me in your newspaper, and... I decided I should have listened to you when you tried to tell us about their policies. I was just-- I guess I just freaked out a little. But I didn't mean to treat you like that. And Clark was wrong too. So, I want you to know that I'm really sorry for whatever happened between us."  
  
Chloe nodded thoughtfully. "Well, I guess if I'd been in your shoes, I would have been worried about what people would think too."  
  
Lana nodded as well. "I just-- I have a--" she sighed and began again. "I think we both aren't that great at finding other girls we can relate to, and... I don't want a silly thing like that to get in the way of our friendship. I know we aren't that close yet, but I feel like we could be, and I'd really like that. I'd prefer it if we just turned over a new leaf. You know?"  
  
Chloe kept on nodding, objectively impressed with how many times Lana had managed to use the words "I" and "me" in a single sentence. "I'd like that, too, Lana." And she was surprised to find that she was being perfectly honest.   
  
She was just going to have to accept that Lana was the type of person who did all her thinking out loud. And who never thought about anything except how it directly related to herself. But then, Chloe wasn't perfect either. Nobody ever was.  
  
"Oh, you don't know how relieved I am to hear that, Chloe," Lana said, and squeezed Chloe's elbow with a warm smile. "So, we're still friends?"  
  
Chloe tongued the roof of her mouth subconsciously, recalling how Whitney's tongue had slid across the same spot as they held each other in the fresh night air the previous evening. She hid a small shudder in remembrance, and after a moment's pause, she gave Lana her sweetest, brightest smile. "As far as I'm concerned, all is forgiven and forgotten."  
  
Lana beamed at her and bade her farewell, marveling to herself how painlessly that had gone.   
  
The next order of business for Lana would be a little more daunting, she knew, but she didn't want to lose her momentum. She doggedly looked for Whitney during lunch, dreading having to break his heart as she fully knew she would. He had been an excellent, devoted boyfriend, but... she had to admit that any spark she had felt for him had long ago dwindled, and she was just unwilling to continue investing in a relationship that left her so emotionally unsatisfied. Especially when there was Clark--  
  
She spotted Whitney eating his lunch with his friends at what she knew the other kids called the "jock table", and she slid into the empty spot next to him. He had been laughing at one of his friends' jokes, and when he saw her, his smile didn't waver... but something in his eyes did.   
  
"Hey there."  
  
"Hi, Whitney, do you have a minute? We need to talk."  
  
His jaw set in determination and decision. "Yeah, we do."  
  
Ignoring his teammates' exchange of meaningful smirks, he followed her to a secluded wing of the cafeteria's hallway.  
  
"You first, I guess," he prompted her.  
  
"Whitney, I've been thinking a lot about our conversation the other day," Lana began, forcing herself to look him in the eye. "And-- I want you to know, first of all, that I would never hurt you on purpose."  
  
He had to bite his tongue to keep himself from snorting sarcastically, but he did manage to nod a little.  
  
"But I gave it a lot of thought, and I decided that you're right." She signed, forlorn. "I'm sorry, but the truth is that I don't love you. I don't. I really tried to, but I just don't feel it there."  
  
"Ah. OK."  
  
She didn't notice his flat answer, and just kept going: "You've been great. You've always been there for me when I needed you. I couldn't have asked for a more committed boyfriend. But-- I think we're too young to get tied down to people we don't really love. And I think it's time to be honest with ourselves and just... just admit it's time to move on."  
  
"I agree."  
  
She blinked, taken aback. "You do?"  
  
"Yep." He touched her arm gently. "Y'know, Lana, if it's one thing I've learned recently, it's that life is way too short to spend it not being true to yourself."  
  
Her expression changed into one of great relief, and she smiled at him, genuine affection and gratitude in her eyes. "You're absolutely right, Whitney. I'm just a little surprised that you're being so understanding about this."  
  
"Well, I can't make you feel what you don't," he said neutrally. "I'd rather you were honest with me than try to force something that isn't there."  
  
"Thank you so much for saying that, Whitney," Lana said. "I'm glad you're not too upset about it. You know I would never want to hurt you. You're a great guy, and a great friend, you know that?"  
  
"Thanks, Lana," he said softly, sincerely touched despite himself. "To tell you the truth, Lana, I feel the same way. I guess you're just... too good for me." Then he smiled serenely.  
  
The irony was, of course, completely lost on Lana. "Oh, don't say that, Whitney," she said earnestly. "You're amazing. You really are. And I really do hope that after we both heal from this, we can stay friends. You mean a lot to me."  
  
"Me, too," Whitney admitted. "You'll probably always have a special place in my life, you know."  
  
She smiled at him, full of warmth and sincerity. "I know, Whitney. Mine too."  
  
The silence between them grew awkward, and he gestured toward the cafeteria.   
  
"I should head back."  
  
"OK."  
  
"I'll see you around, Lana."  
  
"Take good care of yourself, Whitney."  
  
He nodded and ducked back into the cafeteria without looking back.  
  
Lana sighed, still in a happy daze. Truly, she should have done this weeks, maybe even months ago. She felt as though the weight of several worlds had been lifted off her shoulders since that morning. And now to take care of the third order of business. She'd saved the best for last. Skipping off happily, she went off to find Clark.  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
  
"Dude, I don't know how you kept a straight face," Chloe murmured, smirking into Whitney's neck later that afternoon. She shifted on the edge of his truck's bed to lean in towards him better. He was stroking her hair, marveling at the little bristly spikes into which she'd molded it. They stared off into space together contentedly, a Kansas field stretching out before them.   
  
"Trust me, it was tough," he said, and grinned wickedly. He felt more at ease than he could have ever imagined just a few weeks before. He squeezed her tighter, and she snuggled closer in response. "I'm just glad it's over."  
  
"Me, too."  
  
"So what happens now?"  
  
"Hell if I know, but I know it's going to be interesting," she answered truthfully, and he felt her breathing against his collarbone, and that made everything all right to him. He twined his fingers around hers, content to sit there in the cool spring afternoon in silence.   
  
Then... the first drop came without warning, sharp and almost cool enough to sting, and it was rapidly followed by another, and then another.   
  
"Oh, my God, is it raining again?" Chloe asked, tilting her face upwards and earning a few splashes on her face for her trouble.  
  
"Yeah, I guess it is."  
  
Chloe met Whitney's gaze and gave him a wry smile, which he returned easily. The rain was increasing in its intensity by the second, and it took very little time for their hair to begin becoming weighted under the droplets.   
  
"Cool," she said simply after a moment, leaning back into his arms. With no hesitation at all, she angled her head back to welcome the downpour.  
  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
THE END  
  
Thanks to the following people who were devoted/ crazy enough to beta this story and/or give me some incredibly good suggestions and character insights, all of which without which it would have truly sucked:   
  
Tresca, queenofalostart, SullivanLane, wookie1013, Cyb, arc, Kassie, Meredith Welling, LJC, Raincitygirl, steptacular, Kathe, ktbaxter, Teri Leigh, and LJC.   
  
Also due gratitude are all the amazing folks over at the TelevisionWithoutPity.com Smallville forums, who have become my online surrogate family. I heart you all for humoring my crazy EJ obsession and giving me feedback on my stories at 4 a.m. on weekdays. Truly a finer group of people does not exist anywhere else online in my estimation. Mmkay I'll stop gushing now. 


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